http://www.opendemocracy.net/openeconomy…

im Rahmen der Reihe Talking for Peace. A Karl Kahane Lecture Series laden wir Sie sehr herzlich zu der

folgenden Veranstaltung ein:

Wednesday, September 8, 2010, 7.00 p.m.

WOMEN CARRY THE BURDEN CONFLICT PREVENTION AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION

Opening event in the framework of the 2010 International Meeting of National Committees for UNIFEM (Part of UN Women) presented by DER STANDARD

Welcome: Gabriele Heinisch-Hosek, Federal Minister for Women and Civil Service

Introduction to UN Resolution 1325: Maj. Gen. Johann Pucher, National Security Policy Director, Federal Ministry of Defence and Sports

Keynote: Inés Alberdi, Executive Director of UNIFEM (Part of UN Women)

Contributions:

Sonja Biserko, Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, Serbia

Taghreed El-Khodary, New York Times, Gaza

Liberata Mulamula, Executive Secretary, International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, Burundi

Anat Saragusti, Executive Director of Agenda, Israel

Moderator: Gudrun Harrer, Senior Editor, DER STANDARD

In cooperation with

the Austrian National Committee for UNIFEM (Part of UN Women)

and the support of the Federal Chancellery, the Federal Ministry for Women and Civil Service,
the Federal Ministry of Defence and Sports (Directorate for Security Policy,
and the Vienna Institute for International Dialogue and Cooperation.

Bruno Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue | Armbrustergasse 15 | 1190 Wien

Please register: Tel.: 3188260/20 | Fax: 318 82 60/10 | e-mail: einladung.kreiskyforum@kreisky.org

Melitta Campostrini
Bruno Kreisky Forum
for International Dialogue
Armbrustergasse 15
A-1190 Vienna

We decided to post this in recognition of the fact that it presents material that shows ways of thinking that are very different from ours, but may also have true meaning to the several constituencies that read the source from where we picked up this article. Be they evangelical Christians, Orthodox Jews, or devout Muslims – a circle of groups that despite seeming differences among themselves are quite united in their views of the Middle East.

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The ‘Zionist plot’ to build a mosque.

By Wesley Pruden, Jewish World Review - August 24, 2010 / 14 Elul, 5770

The Ground Zero mosque, which is stirring such a sandstorm in New York City, isn’t so popular in certain precincts of the Middle East, either. Some Muslims there think President Obama and Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York are nuts. Impotent and irresolute, too.

Some of the true believers in Arabia say the mosque is a conspiracy hatched by the Jews to set out a clear and permanent connection between Sept. 11 and Islam, a constant reminder of an attack on America led by devout Muslims. Dr. Abd al-Muti Bayumi, a prominent fellow of the Islamic Research Academy of Al Azhar, sometimes regarded as “the Vatican of Sunni Islam,” says the construction of a mosque anywhere near Ground Zero is the child of a “devious mentality” to connect the dots of Sept. 11 and Islam, to stoke memories of barbarism in the name of Islam.

Another Arab notability, Dr. Amna Nazir, a professor of doctrine and philosophy at Al Azhar, calls “building a mosque on this rubble indicates bad intention — even if we wished to shut our eyes, close our minds and insist on good will.” These are not the empty sentiments of good will and sensitivity so beloved of the girly men of the West. They’re statements of concern that “Zionist conspiracy” aid in construction of the Ground Zero mosque will ultimately damage Islam. Dr. Bayumi, for one, preaches suicidal jihad to demonstrate that his heart is in the wrong place: “I say in all honesty that we recruit the people of Islam, and instill in them the spirit of the true jihad, which is death for the sake of Allah, for the sake of our faith.”

The skepticism and hostility in Arabia to building the Ground Zero mosque — and until recently the proposed mosque was bigger news in the Middle East than in Minneapolis or Memphis — contrasts sharply with the enthusiasm of Muslims for the project in America. What do Muslims in Arabia know that Muslims in America don’t?

Sounds like a lot. Raymond Ibrahim, associate director of the Middle East Forum, author of “The Al Qaeda Reader” and guest lecturer at the National Defense Intelligence College, thinks it’s a result of culture and geography: “I believe it has to do with the differing mentalities of Western, or ‘indigenous,’ Muslims. The [indigenous Muslims], who have had little experience of the West, simply cannot believe that Muslims [in America] would be so foolhardy as to pursue such an obvious affront to their host nation.” An indigenous Muslim can’t believe that even an infidel nation would tolerate the insult. He knows what a similar insult, such as the construction of a Christian chapel in Saudi Arabia, would invite in an Islamic country. Not knowing very much about the world, the indigenous Muslim expects a similar result from the infidels.

Muslims here, on the other hand, have learned to game the system in the West, particularly in America, where the elites’ thirst for moonshine is unquenchable. Muslim troublemakers have learned to expect apologies and excuses for anything they do so long as they invoke the right liberal weasel words, such as “tolerance” or “pluralism” or “dialogue.” They’ve learned that talk of “building bridges,” particularly if the bridges lead to nowhere, are preferred fare in the salons of the elites. Insulting Americans invites only apologies, accompanied by abundant bowing and curtsying. George W. Bush went to the Islamic Center in Washington only six days after Sept. 11 to preach that “Islam is peace,” that “when we think of Islam, we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world.”

Too bad for both George W. and Islam, but that’s not what most people here think of Islam. You couldn’t expect Michael Bloomberg to understand any of this, but Barack Obama, the son and stepson of Muslims who received his early education in Islamic schools, must know better. He should be familiar with the Islamic worldview that warm and fuzzy feel-good talk — what we once called “appeasement” — correctly invites contempt from men with strongly held conviction, however evil that conviction might be.

The American elites no longer understand strongly held convictions, good or evil, religious or political. The church and synagogue is only a place for rites and ritual, a place to marry your daughters and bury your dead. But devout Muslims really believe. They never apologize for who they are or what they believe. They have only contempt for the platitudes they have learned to use so effectively in hoodwinking the West — and for presidents who peddle the moonshine.

*:-.,_,.-:*’“’*:-.,_,.-:*’“’*:-.,_,.-:**:-.,_,.-:*’“

Op-Ed Columnist at The New York Times says – Islam needs a Mandela and means three of them.

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise.

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: August 21, 2010

I love that line: “We have to surprise them.” I was watching the movie on an airplane and scribbled that line down on my napkin because it summarizes what is missing today in so many places: leaders who surprise us by rising above their histories, their constituencies, their pollsters, their circumstances — and just do the right things for their countries.

I tried to recall the last time a leader of importance surprised me on the upside by doing something positive, courageous and against the popular will of his country or party. I can think of a few: Yitzhak Rabin in signing onto the Oslo peace process. Anwar Sadat in going to Jerusalem. And, of course, Mandela in the way he led South Africa.

But these are such exceptions. Look at Iraq today. Five months after its first truly open, broad-based election, in which all the major communities voted, the political elite there cannot rise above Shiite or Sunni identities and reach out to the other side so as to produce a national unity government that could carry Iraq into the future. True, democracy takes a long time to grow, especially in a soil bloodied by a murderous dictator for 30 years. Nevertheless, up to now, Iraq’s new leaders have surprised us only on the downside.

Will they ever surprise us the other way? Should we care now that we’re leaving? Yes, because the roots of 9/11 are an intra-Muslim fight, which America, as an ally of one faction, got pulled into. There are at least three different intra-Muslim wars raging today. One is between the Sunni far right and the Sunni far-far right in Saudi Arabia. This was the war between Osama bin Laden (the far-far right) and the Saudi ruling family (the far right). It is a war between those who think women shouldn’t drive and those who think they shouldn’t even leave the house. Bin Laden attacked us because we prop up his Saudi rivals — which we do to get their oil.

In Iraq, you have the pure Sunni- versus-Shiite struggle. And in Pakistan, you have the fundamentalist Sunnis versus everyone else: Shiites, Ahmadis and Sufis. You will notice that in each of these civil wars, barely a week goes by without one Muslim faction blowing up another faction’s mosque or gathering of innocents — like Tuesday’s bombing in Baghdad, at the opening of Ramadan, which killed 61 people.

In short: the key struggle with Islam is not inter-communal, and certainly not between Americans and Muslims. It is intra-communal and going on across the Muslim world. The reason the Iraq war was, is and will remain important is that it created the first chance for Arab Sunnis and Shiites to do something they have never done in modern history: surprise us and freely write their own social contract for how to live together and share power and resources. If they could do that, in the heart of the Arab world, and actually begin to ease the intra-communal struggle within Islam, it would be a huge example for others. It would mean that any Arab country could be a democracy and not have to be held together by an iron fist from above.

But it will be impossible without Iraqi Shiite and Sunni Mandelas ready to let the future bury the past. As one of Mandela’s guards, watching the new president engage with South African whites, asks in the movie, “How do you spend 30 years in a tiny cell and come out ready to forgive the people who put you there?” It takes a very special leader.

This is also why the issue of the mosque and community center near the site of 9/11 is a sideshow. The truly important question “is not can the different Muslim sects live with Americans in harmony, but can they live with each other in harmony,” said Stephen P. Cohen, an expert on interfaith relations and author of “Beyond America’s Grasp: a Century of Failed Diplomacy in the Middle East.”

Indeed, the big problem is not those Muslims building mosques in America, it is those Muslims blowing up mosques in the Middle East. And the answer to them is not an interfaith dialogue in America. It is an intrafaith dialogue — so sorely missing — in the Muslim world. Our surge in Iraq will never bear fruit without a political surge by Arabs and Muslims to heal intracommunal divides. It would be great if President Obama surprised everyone and gave another speech in Cairo — or Baghdad — saying that.

THE FILM ‘LEBANON’: INSIDE AN ISRAELI TANK AND THE REALITY OF WAR.

21 August 2010

By J. Hoberman
SFWeekly.com

Lebanon, written and directed by Samuel Maoz, is not just the year’s most impressive first feature but also the strongest new movie of any kind I’ve seen in 2010. Actually, Lebanon — which won the Golden Lion at Venice, after being rejected by Berlin and Cannes — hardly seems like a debut, perhaps because it’s based on a scenario Maoz had been replaying in his head for nearly 30 years.

The infighting in the Israeli government prior to the restart of peace talks with the Palestinians, has produced an early interesting appointment for next Israeli Army Chief of Staff. The appointment was made by the Minister of Defence  Aharon Barack – a former, and most decorated, Chief himself,

Barack was the man that met President Obama rather then Foreign Minister Lieberman. Barack is ready for the upcoming negotiations while Lieberman is cold to these moves.

The training and past jobs that the February 2011 incoming new Chief brings with him include naval experience helpful with dealing with the Gaza strip, and ground forces experience that will be needed in dealing with all aspects of decision making. By not being directly versed with the Air Force, it can be concluded that Iran will not be the main objective as foreseen by Minister Barack. This probably pleases Washington but creates dissension in the Netanyahu Cabinet.

Rav Aluf (Lieutenant General) Yoav Gallant ( born November 1958 in Jaffa) was appointed today (August 22, 2010) to be the commander of the Israel Defense Forces Southern Command, and has been chosen to succeed Gabi Ashkenazi as the next Chief of General Staff.^[1]

Gallant received a B.A. in Business and Finance Management from the University of Haifa. He began his military career in 1977 as a naval commando in the unit called Flotilla 13, which he would later command^[2].

In the early 1980′s he worked as a lumberjack in Alaska^[3].

In the late 1990s Galant moved into land forces, commanding the Jenin Brigade of the West Bank Division, the 162nd Armored Division, and eventually attaining the rank of a major general while becoming the Military Secretary of the Prime Minister in 2002 and later commander of the Southern Command in 2005.

Today it was announced that he would become the IDF’s 20th Chief of Staff^[4]

Galant will become Israel’s 20th Chief of Staff, succeeding Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, whose term will end in February. Barak’s relationship with Ashkenazi has been rocky, and the relatively early appointment of Galant will not be comfortable for Ashkenazi.

Galant was chosen over four other candidates: Generals Benny Ganz, Gadi Eisencott, Gadi Shamni and Avi Mizrachi.

Several Israeli politicians have criticized the way in which Galant was chosen. MK Aryeh Eldad raised questions about the selection saying, “we won’t be able to fully trust the next Chief of Staff, if we don’t have confidence with the one who nominated him. If we don’t trust Ehud Barak, then we can’t trust the new Chief of Staff.” Eldad said Israel needs to conduct wider hearings on the candidates for the Chief of Staff.

Friday August 6, 2010 is the  day that 65 years ago the US dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and the world changed with a technology on the lose.

On my way to meet a UN official on Thursday, August 5th, I was stopped by a Japanese TV crew that wanted to hear one more opinion on how Japan and the US should interact in ways of remembering that day.

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Do I know that tomorrow will be 65 years since the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima?

Yes I do.

What do you think, was it right?

In a state of war – this is complicated. I will not take position on that but clearly will take position that it should not be allowed to happen again as today, practically every no-body can get the bomb and threaten the whole world.

Should the US apologize?

I will not take position on the actual bombing , but clearly there is a place for an apology for the loss of life.

You know that for the first time a US official representative is going to the shrine tomorrow?

I did not know, but I think this should have been done a long time ago.

Do you think President Obama should go to the shrine when he visits Japan?

A sure yes, but he does not have to apologize for the bombing itself – only for he loss of life and the destruction, and make sure that he is for stopping this sort of things in he future.

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Picturing the Bomb Archives

Parts of the MARTIN FACKLER article in the New York Times of August 6, 2010

HIROSHIMA, Japan — With the mournful gong of a Buddhist temple bell and the release of a flock of doves, a crowd of 55,000 on Friday solemnly marked the moment 65 years ago when the world’s first atomic attack incinerated this city under a towering mushroom cloud.

For first time, a representative of the United States, Ambassador John V. Roos, participated in the annual ceremony at the Hiroshima Shrine, raising hopes here of a visit soon by a more prominent guest, President Obama, who is scheduled to be in Japan in November.

Mr. Obama has become a popular figure here since his speech in Prague last year calling for the for elimination of nuclear weapons. The mayor and other residents of Hiroshima have offered him repeated invitations to come to their city, which — along with Nagasaki — has become one of the world’s most recognized symbols of the horrors of nuclear war.

American officials have traditionally skipped the annual ceremony, fearing their presence would renew the debate over whether the United States should apologize for the World War II bombings, which together killed more than 200,000 people in explosions so intense that many victims were simply vaporized, leaving only ghostly shadows on walls, while others died in slow agony from burns and radiation sickness.

Such a debate would be politically divisive in the United States and could drive a wedge between the United States and Japan, now one of Washington’s closest allies. American officials have long defended the bombings as having shortened the war and avoided an invasion, which they say would have cost untold thousands of American and Japanese lives. But many Japanese see them as the epitome of the indiscriminate slaughter of modern warfare, and a principal reason for the nation’s postwar pacifism.

In interviews this week, political leaders here, including aging survivors of the bombing, sought to allay such concerns, saying they had no intention of asking the president to make an apology. Instead, they said they would feel some measure of solace if a visit to their city could help Mr. Obama to realize his vision of a denuclearized world.

“There is no point in apologizing now, after 65 years,” said Akihiro Takahashi, 79, the former head of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and a survivor of the bombing, who has spearheaded the effort to bring Mr. Obama by writing four letters of invitation. “We want President Obama to see with his own eyes what really happened here. This will give him stronger willpower to eliminate nuclear weapons.”

Calls have spread in Japan for Mr. Obama to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki since the Prague speech and his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize. Speculation has focused on his November visit, which will coincide with a gathering in Hiroshima of other Nobel Peace laureates.

During a visit to Washington in January, Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima personally extended an invitation to Mr. Obama. In a speech during the ceremony Friday, Mr. Akiba praised the president’s “powerful influence” in pushing nuclear disarmament.

Indeed, a new sense of hope seems to permeate this city that the world’s nuclear powers, and particularly the United States, may finally share its desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons. In front of city hall, a large sign proclaims Hiroshima to be part of an “Obamajority” backing Mr. Obama’s call in Prague.

While some Japanese still consider the bombings a war crime, mainstream opinion appears to be more complex, largely out of recognition of Japan’s militaristic past. In interviews with more than two dozen Japanese who visited the Hiroshima peace memorial this week, only one said with any conviction that the United States should apologize.

Their views largely echoed the message of the peace memorial, which sidesteps the issue of responsibility and presents Hiroshima as a tragic warning to all against the use of nuclear weapons.

Younger Japanese said that while they were appalled by the graphic depictions of individual suffering in the peace memorial’s museum, they did not view Hiroshima as an atrocity on the same moral level as the Holocaust, because the Japanese were not solely victims.

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From the Financial Times I just learned that UN Secrtary General Ban Ki-moon will also be at the ceremony today – and he is also a FIRST – he is the First UN Secretary-General to participate. Where his predecessors so busy that they did not find the time to go – after all, they did not have the US problem that kept US Presidents from going? Or did they?

Opinion: It’s a WikiLeaks World, Get Used to It.

by Jim Harper, Director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute.
Special to AOL News
 http://www.aolnews.com/opinion/article/o…

(Aug. 5) – No matter where right or wrong lie in the posting of classified military reports on WikiLeaks.org, one lesson should be clear: This is how it’s going to be. Technology will continue to undercut secrecy — not just in the military, but in all large organizations.

Government and corporate leaders who aren’t ahead of this problem may already have trouble on their hands they don’t know about.

When 90,000 pages of documents chronicling the Afghan war went online last week, their potential effects on military planning and security caused the White House to strongly condemn their posting as “irresponsible.” Differing more than slightly, Salon commentator Glenn Greenwald praised WikiLeaks.org as “one of the most valuable and important organizations in the world.”

Culture: Cultural trends are coming into play as well. Military service-members today live in a culture of information sharing that might baffle their senior officers. They expect to be in touch with the outside world during their tours. Their service is long and difficult enough without quarantining them in a communications bubble for protracted periods. Indeed, doing so would undermine military effectiveness by cutting deeply into the morale of young men and women whose stateside lives are “always connected.” This is the generation that knows the value and power of sharing information.

Doubling down on information security is an option, but there are better approaches than to hunker in the secrecy corner.

Information technology is a strong and growing adversary, and it is better to turn its strengths to one’s advantage than to waste resources trying to fight against it.
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Pentagon Wants WikiLeaks to Return Classified War Documents.

by Christopher Weber, aol Correspondent
 http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/08/05/…

A week after WikiLeaks dumped 92,000 classified military documents online, the Pentagon is ordering the whistle-blower Web site to give them back.

“The Defense Department demands that WikiLeaks return immediately to the U.S. government all versions of documents obtained directly or indirectly from the Department of Defense databases or records,” Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters Thursday.

The Pentagon also ordered WikiLeaks to delete all the documents, most of which relate to military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, from its Web site and records, The Associated Press reported.

Morrell didn’t say what efforts, besides asking firmly, the Defense Department might be able to take to ensure WikiLeaks complies. Right now, Morrell said, the Defense Department hopes WikiLeaks will “do the right thing.”

WikiLeaks has not responded to the Pentagon request.

The Web site posted the reports, mostly raw intelligence reports, July 25, 2010.

Wikileaks is a 3-year-old nonprofit founded by Julian Assange that allows anonymous sources to upload private documents so anyone can read them online.

The Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky wedding of Saturday July 31, 2010 was described in the papers and gowns depicted. The brides parents were in front and the grooms father well – very much in the back as he has  some nasty things on his records.
Well, further, the name itself, may not be considered a great asset to the Clintons – but there is also something quite interesting in this name – it belongs to some sort of Jewish  aristocracy – and no-one seemed to take notice.

So here is our SCOOP.

We have a Scoop – The name Mezvinsky comes with Jewish history that was not noted by the “mavens” of the Chelsea and Marc Wedding. There is a family tree here somewhere that might be as old as the Clinton’s.

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You see – the ending … sky means you come from a particular location.

A name such as Polsky or Polansky  as a family name means you came from Poland and probably ended up somewhere else.
It connects to Polonia or Poland.  Warshawsky is more specific – you come from Warsaw.

Jews had no family names – they were called by a first name the son of a first name – something like David ben Yishai, who was King David – so his dynasty had really no name. When European governments decreed you must have a name they turned around and looked for help in professions, trees, animals…  and eventually names of locations.

As most Jews lived in small towns and rural settlements in the Poland, Ukraine, Belorussia, Western Russia  region, and eventually many of these Jews migrated to the West, many of these locations became immortalized of sort and in many cases in a Yiddish language form of the name.

So we have Brodsky  based on Brodi. It becomes more difficult with Berdishewsky – that was Berdichevsky based on Berdichev.

Similarly, Mezvinsky – we guess – comes from Mezibish  via  Mezivish – Mezvishsky – Mezvinsky. The “b” and “v” are interchangeable – with certain rules – in Hebrew and thus also in Yidish (Jidish). The shortening and “n” introduction are no surprise either.

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We researched the internet and did not fail to discover the importance of MEZIBISH / Mezibush.

The Baal Shem Tov’s grave is in Mezibush – today thousands of religious Jews travel to Mezibish  on his day of death according to the Jewish Calendar. In 2007 this was May 30th.

THAT WAS AS IF I FELL UPON THE HISTORIC LOCATION OF AN OLD VATICAN!

We found a travelogue from a Viznitz Chassid http://twitter.com/viznitz
 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&c…

A Pilgrimage to the Baal Shem Tov’s grave – Baal Shem Tov …
Late in the morning we were off to Mezibush (170 km), where the Holy
Baal … After a three-hour ride, we arrived in Mezibush. The day was
bright blue with …
 Their travels to the grave sites of the Baal Shem Tov in Mezibush and all the Rebbes in the Chabad lineage from the Altar Rebbe Schneur Zalman, the author of the Tanya, to the fifth Lubavich Rebbe Rashab buried in the Soviet Union (The last two Lubavitch Rebbes are buried in New York). In total, we drove over 1500 miles through Russia and Ukraine by bus, sometimes day and night sleeping in contorted positions on our seats.
We visited a number of different Jewish communities each with its own story. For me, the highlight of the trip was standing at the grave of the Baal Shem Tov.

To understand some more about Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov (The Besht) 18 Elul 5458 – 6 Sivan 5520 (1698-1760), please see - http://www.baalshemtov.com/whowashe.htm

And a few further short notes: “Rabbi Yisroel (Israel) ben Eliezer, August 27, 1698 (18 Elul) – May 22, 1760), often called Baal Shem Tov or Besht, was a Jewish mystical rabbi. He is considered to be the founder of Hasidic Judaism (see also Mezhbizh Hasidic dynasty).

The Besht was born to Eliezer and Sara in Okopy – a small village that over the centuries has been part of Poland, Russia, and is now part of Ukraine, (located in the Borshchivskyi Raion (district) of the Ternopil Oblast). He died in Medzhybizh, ( Polish: Mi?dzybórz, Mi?dzyborz or Mi?dzybó?), which had once been part Poland and Russia, and is also now in Ukraine, in the Khmelnytskyi Oblast.

The Besht is better known to many religious Jews as “the holy Baal Shem” (der heyliger baal shem in Yiddish), or most commonly, the Baal Shem Tov . The title Baal Shem Tov is usually translated into English as “Master of the Good Name”,
with Tov (“Good”) modifying Shem (“[Divine] Name”), although it is more correctly understood as a combination of Baal Shem (“Master of the [Divine] Name”) and Tov (an honorific epithet to the man). The name Besht — the acronym from the words comprising that name, bet ayin shin tes—is typically used in print rather than speech. The appellation “Baal Shem” was not unique to Rabbi Yisroel ben Eliezer; however, it is Rabbi Yisroel ben Eliezer who is most closely identified as a “Baal Shem”,
as he was the founder of the spiritual movement of Hasidic Judaism.

The little biographical information that is known about Besht is so interwoven with legends of miracles that in many cases it is hard to arrive at the historical facts. From the numerous legends connected with his birth it appears that his parents were poor, upright, and pious. When he was orphaned, his community cared for him. At school, he distinguished himself only by his frequent disappearances, being always found in the lonely woods surrounding the place, rapturously enjoying the beauties of nature. Many of his disciples believed that he came from the Davidic line tracing its lineage to the royal house of King David, and by extension with the institution of the Jewish Messiah.”

Today, The Chabad Hasidic Dynasties exist in the US and no parties running for elections dares to forget them. In New York State the big centers are in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and in Monsey, Rockland County. They used to support Mayor Giuliani.

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What was described above is a little hole today but this was a wonderful town with a Rabbi’s court that sent its emissaries all over the Jewish World – think of it as a mini-Jewish Vatican. The fact that someone came from there was not un-noted. We do not know what the Mezvinsky ancestor’s role was at that court – but being part of that court made him into the Jewish counter-part of a knight – albeit a spiritual knight.

To explain why I am susceptible to research of this sort is very simple to me – I am a descendant of a similar court in the town of Emden, Germany. That was Rabbi Jacob ben Zwi – Emden whose acronim is YA’BETZ and then was spelled as Jawetz, with various turns that in the US got also the much more recent spelling Javits by the brothers Benjamin and Jacob Javits who Americanized their father’s name that was Jawetz. Jacob Javits is obviously the famous US Senator from New York who wrote among other things the act that limits the Presidential power to declare war. I vouch that in most vases, when someone has a name with this sort of lineage – this becomes a responsibility for behavior and a shield against the outside world. Does it work in all cases – obviously not. Will it work in Marc Mezvinsky’s case – that remains to be seen.

If by any chance someone shows this article to Marc Mezvinsky or to any of the Clinton’s, my suggestion is that he leave Goldman Sachs and takes his talents and I am sure, good intentions, to a job that will bring honor to him and to future generations of Mezvinskys.

U.N. Supports Israeli Account of Border Clash.

Mohammed Zaatari/Associated Press

United Nations peacekeepers, right, on their armored vehicle, monitored the area as an Israeli mechanical grabber operated near the border area with Lebanon, in the southern village of Adaisseh, on Wednesday.

By ISABEL KERSHNER

Published: August 4, 2010

An Israeli commander, two Lebanese soldiers and a Lebanese journalist were killed in the border skirmish, the worst clash in the area in four years. But the border region was calm on Wednesday as Israel’s leaders appeared to try to cool the atmosphere. Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, told Israel Radio that the Israeli response to what he called a “provocation” by the Lebanese Army had been “correct” and “measured,” and said there was a need to ensure that a local incident did not turn into a crisis.

Israeli citizens and vacationers in northern Israel were told to carry on as normal, and that there was no need for special precautions. Israeli forces completed their task of pruning brush in the area of the confrontation without incident, according to an Israeli military spokeswoman.

Lebanon had said that the confrontation started after Israeli soldiers crossed into Lebanese territory to cut down a tree. Israel said its forces were clearing brush as part of routine maintenance work in a gap between the so-called Blue Line, the internationally recognized border, and its security fence. Israel said it had coordinated its actions in advance with Unifil.

In a statement on Wednesday, Unifil said its investigators were still on the ground and that inquiries were continuing.

“Unifil established, however, that the trees being cut by the Israeli Army are located south of the Blue Line on the Israeli side,” it said.

Unifil added that in the area in question, the Lebanese government had “some reservations concerning the Blue Line,” which was demarcated by the United Nations when Israel withdrew its forces from Lebanon in 2000, “as did the Israeli government at some other locations.”

But both sides committed themselves to respecting the line as identified, Unifil added, saying the United Nations believed “that the Blue Line must be respected in its entirety by all parties.”

Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli government, said the announcement “clearly corroborates the Israeli version — that our routine activity was conducted in its entirety south of the frontier, and that the Lebanese Army opened fire without provocation and without any justification whatsoever.”

Lebanon acknowledged on Wednesday that the trees were south of the Blue Line, but maintained that they were in its territory. Lebanon’s information minister, Tarek Mitri, told reporters that his country disputed the demarcation of the Blue Line in that area.

Each side had blamed the other in the hours after the gunfire, trading accusations of violating the United Nations Security Council resolution that underpins the four-year-old cease-fire.

A senior American official in Washington said that the Lebanese military appeared to have been responsible for starting the gunfire.

Israeli military officials insisted that the attack on their forces was premeditated. They pointed to internal tensions in Lebanon and what they said was the growing influence of Hezbollah, the Shiite, Iranian-backed militia, on certain elements within the Lebanese Army.

But Mr. Barak, the Israeli defense minister, said Wednesday that the incident had not been planned by the Lebanese General Staff and that Hezbollah was not a partner to it.

Under the Patronage of the President of the Republic of Austria – Dr. Heinz Fischer.

With a Honorary Committe that includes Patricia Kahane – President of the Karl Kahane Foundation,  Dr. Michael Hauple – Mayor of Vienna, as well as Former Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister  – Dr. Alois Mock, and famous Austrian artists – Andre Heller and Joseph Hader. Also among others, Rabbi Marc Schneier from the US, Rafi Elul from Israel, Ibrahim Issa from Palestine.

The Conference will deal with Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and the toning down of media that inflames hatred.

The Conference will avoid  touching upon Middle East Conflict Issues in an effort at reaching first mutual understanding before tackling issues on which there can be built an agreement to disagree – and seeing that there are other points of view.

 http://www.mjconference.org/

THE MUSLIM JEWISH CONFERENCE – VIENNA – AUGUST 1-6, 2010.

«Our first step together creating the power to forge a link between possibility and reality.
Because the pronunciation of our names is no barrier for friendships.»

The first ‘Muslim Jewish Conference’ 2010 is being held in Vienna from the 1st until
the 6th of August. 60 students from all over the world with a common goal of
establishing peaceful relations between both religions will participate. The conference
consists of discussion committees, guest speakers, open dialogue panels and social
events.

The idea for this project was born in Vienna by two Austrian students, Ilja Sichrovsky
and Matthias Gattermeier, due to their experiences at international student
conferences and driven by the desire to create cultural awareness between young
aspiring Jewish and Muslim academics.

Today, the ‘MJC’-committee harbours over 20 volunteers from Asia, the Middle East, Europe and America, including countries like Austria, Israel, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Turkey and the U S. The Assistant Secretary General in charge of the core of 15  volunteers is Ehab Bilal who grew up in Austria, studied in the UK, and is a Muslim of Libyan parentage.

Ilja Sichrovsky, founder and Secretary General of the MJC: “Representing the
University of Vienna at numerous international student conferences, I have
witnessed inevitable misunderstanding and prejudices between young Muslims and
Jews at first hand. The ‘Muslim Jewish Conference’ was called to life, to be the first
step together for young people creating the power to forge a link between possibility
and reality. Because the pronunciation of our names is no barrier for friendships.”

The ‘Muslim Jewish Conference’ is officially endorsed by the ‘United Nations Alliance of Civilisations’ (UNAOC) and the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The project is partly financed by the ‘Karl Kahane Foundation’ as well as by private donors.

Our vision is to make the MJC an annual conference, set up in different countries
each year and to provide a platform for real change in the interaction between
Muslim and Jewish Communities.

The participants represent a new generation of thinkers and upcoming opinion leaders who are connected by their joint believe in a new era of cooperation.

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Date: 1. – 6.08.2010
Place: Institute for International Development – University of Vienna
c/o Institute for African Sciences – Campus – AAKH, Hof 5.1
A-1090 Wien
URL: www.mjconference.org

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The Organisation Committee:

• Ilja Sichrovsky – Secretary General
• Ehab Bilal – Assist. Secretary General
• Matthias Gattermeier – Logistics, Protocol & Security
• Fatima Hasanain – Committees & Content
• Asad Farooq – Organization & Registration
• Florence Rivero – Organization & Design
• Yvonne Feiger – Logistics & Fundraising
• Mustafa Jalil Qureshi – Head of chairs
• Daniel Gallner – Finance
• Abdul Niazi – Ambassador for the MJC
• Stefanie Andruchowitz – Head of Department Support
• Valerie Prassl – Head Public Relations
• Akshay Ganju – Chair
• Eyal Raviv – Chair
• Magdalena Kloss – Chair

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When we researched the internet, we found that The Muttahidda Jihad Council (MJC), an alliance of Muslim Kashmiri freedom fighters as they call themselves, or terrorists, as we call them, is what the web knew as MJC before the start of this new Austrian effort. Things get even worse as there are other Abdul Niazi on the web. Whatever, we hope that the Austrian effort grows to become a success and we remember the role Chancellor Kreisky had in starting Israeli-Palestinian negotiations years ago.

Further, Karl Kahane and Bruno Kreisky , with other Kreisky friends, created in 1991 through the Karl Kahane Foundation also the Bruno Kreisky Forum in order to continue the Kreisky’s work on Human Rights, the Middle Eastern Peace Process,  Europe after the Cold War, and other issues close to him – we assume that the powerful ongoing Kreisky Forum had something to do with the organization of this new effort at tackling the Middle East peace process issue from a longer term understanding base.

The involvement of Rabbi Marc Schneier from the US is proof that his three year old  ongoing effort, on which our website reported several times,  of  bringing Jewish and Muslim communities in the US to a closer contact with meetings in homes as well as within religious centers, intended to listen to each others deep concerns rather then professing to shout at each other their frustrations, is part of the concept of the new effort.
 http://www.karlkahanefoundation.org/inde…

Also, New Generations – Crossing Borders.
In 1994 the Middle East Youth Peace Forum together with the Bruno Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue started the project New Generations – Crossing Borders. A group of young Palestinians, Israelis, Jordanians and Austrians met regularly over a period of four years in order to establish personal relations, overcome stereotypes, gain skills in conflict resolution and acquire leadership qualities.

The experiences of the participants were documented in the German/English publication Crossing Borders by Margit Schmidt et al, published by Picus Verlag, Vienna, 1999.

This comes to show that the young may eventually achieve what the older generation was not able to achieve.

??http://www.karlkahanefoundation.org/index.php?36

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Jüdisch-muslimisches Treffen.

Muslim Jewish Conference von 1. bis 6. August in Wien.

Wien. 60 muslimische und jüdische Studierende aus aller Welt treffen von 1. bis 6. August in der Uni Wien bei der “Muslim Jewish Conference” (MJC) zusammen. Das Ziel: eine gemeinsame Sprache zu finden und Vorurteile zu überwinden, sagt MJC-Generalsekretär Ilja Sichrovsky. Der 27-Jährige studiert in Wien “Internationale Entwicklung”.

Sichrovsky hat mehrmals an der “World Model United Nations Conference” teilgenommen, bei der eine Uni-Delegation ein Land verkörpert. Dabei ist der Wiener Jude mit muslimischen Studenten in Kontakt gekommen und musste feststellen, dass die Vorurteile auf beiden Seiten groß sind, man aber vieles im intensiven Gespräch ausräumen kann. “Ich habe gemerkt: Wir sind gar nicht so verschieden, wie es uns Medien und auch unsere Eltern zu vermitteln versucht haben.” So kam ihm 2008 erstmals die Idee für die Konferenz.

Gemeinsames Papier

Organisator ist Ehab Bilal (25). Der bekennende, aber nicht streng praktizierende Moslem kommt aus einer libyschen Familie, wuchs in Wien auf und studierte in England. Seit 9/11 hat er das Gefühl, “dass ich schon ein bisschen unterdrückt werde wegen meiner Religion”. Wenn er reise, werde er drei Mal gefragt, mit welchem Ziel er komme. Ihn ärgert, dass wegen einiger Extremisten die gesamte Religion in Verruf kommt.

Zu drei Themen werden die Studenten im August eine gemeinsame Deklaration veröffentlichen:

“Antisemitismus und Islamophobie” – Sichrovsky betont, dass es sich um eine Aufzählung, nicht um eine Gleichstellung beider Begriffe handelt – sowie die Rolle der Bildung und der Medien im Abbau von gegenseitigen Stereotypen.

Der Nahostkonflikt wird beim ersten Mal bewusst ausgeklammert. Man müsse zuerst eine gemeinsame Sprache finden, bevor man ein Thema angehe, “wo man weiß, dass man anderer Meinung ist”, so Sichrovsky.

Die Konferenz wird großteils von der Karl Kahane Foundation finanziert, Bundespräsident Heinz Fischer übernahm den Ehrenschutz. 120 Studenten hatten sich beworben, die besten wurden ausgewählt. Ihr Spektrum reicht von sehr religiös bis säkular.

http://www.mjconference.org

The Beduii of the Negev used to be friendly to Israel – speak Hebrew and many served in the Israeli army. Their weekly Thursday market in Beer Sheba used to be a place where all Israelis would love to go. Their coffee tent events an attraction for Israelis and tourists. True, they have a different life-style, and rather then letting them roam around as nomads, Israel forced them to settle down, but nevertheless, they were part of Israel. What now?

——————
 http://www.hrw.org/en/middle-eastn-afric…

from HRW Press <hrwpress@hrw.org> date Sun, Aug 1, 2010

Israel: Halt Demolitions of Bedouin Homes in Negev Pre-Dawn Raid Destroys Entire Village.

(Jerusalem, August 1, 2010) – The Israeli government should immediately impose a moratorium on demolishing the homes of Bedouin citizens, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should also fully compensate those whose homes and property it has destroyed and allow them to return to their village pending a final agreement with the displaced that respects their rights under international law.

In a pre-dawn raid on July 27, 2010, Israeli security forces destroyed all 45 homes, animal pens, and other structures in the village of al-Araqib, leaving more than 300 people homeless, about half of them children under 16. Nearly 90,000 Palestinian Arab Bedouins, the indigenous inhabitants of the Negev (Naqab) region of southern Israel, live in dozens of “unrecognized” towns. Because the Israeli authorities refuse to recognize their towns and villages, the Bedouins risk the destruction of their homes at any time.

“Tearing down an entire village and leaving its inhabitants homeless without exhausting all other options for settling longstanding land claims is outrageous,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The attack on these Israeli citizens’ property shows that Israel’s discriminatory policies toward Palestinian Arab Bedouin have not changed.”

The July 27 raid began around 4:30 a.m. when 1,300 armed police officers in riot helmets and shields blocked the entrance to the village and entered it. The force included mounted cavalry, helicopters, inspectors from the Israel Land Administration (ILA) – the government agency responsible for managing the 93 percent of Israeli land owned by the state – and demolition crews operating bulldozers, according to witnesses and video images viewed by Human Rights Watch.

The crews forcibly removed the villagers, mostly children and elderly people, from their homes before the demolition operation began. Awad Abu Freih, spokesman for the al-Araqib civil committee, told Human Rights Watch that residents were unarmed and stayed in their homes after police arrived in a form of passive resistance. Bulldozers also destroyed carob and olive trees, chicken coops, and other structures, residents said.

The Israeli police foreign press spokesman, Mickey Rosenfeld, told Human Rights Watch that the police acted on a court order issued 11 years ago but not previously executed. The operation “was done quietly and sensitively and in coordination with the village representatives,” Rosenfeld said. Abu Freih denied that there had been any coordination. Rosenfeld added that Land Administration officials evacuated al-Araqib residents to an area close to the nearby city of Rahat, where, he claimed, they had additional residences.

Ortal Tzabar, a Land Administration spokeswoman, confirmed in a statement to Human Rights Watch that the authorities also uprooted 850 olive trees that she said were “to be replanted elsewhere.”

Abu Freih and Ye’ela Raanan, spokeswoman for the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages, a local organization, said that only a few dozen people from al-Araqib have other homes. Some residents may have spent the night with friends or relatives in Rahat after the demolitions, Raanan said, but “there are at least 250 people now who don’t have another option.” Raanan said she was at al-Araqib during the operation and that residents began on July 28 to build makeshift tents on the site with wooden frames and cheap fabric.

Residents and Israeli rights activists told Human Rights Watch that police began assembling at the village late Monday evening. At 12:15 a.m., the Kiryat Gat Peace Court (court of first instance) rejected an appeal filed by village residents contending that the state had no legal grounds to demolish their homes.

The Negev Coexistence Forum, a Bedouin rights group, said in a statement that al-Araqib existed before the creation of Israel in 1948 and that residents returned there after being evicted by the state in 1951. Many of the unrecognized villages are around Beer Sheva, the Negev’s largest city. The current draft of a metropolitan plan for Beer Sheva designates the land where al-Araqib is located as a “recreational area” and as an area for “forest and forestation.”

A lawyer who represents several al-Araqib residents and who asked not to be named, said that the Israeli government issued “evacuation orders” in 2002 to nine people in the village based on article 21 of the Property Law, which allows for the owner of a piece of property – in this case, the state of Israel claims to own the property – to evict anyone residing on it illegally. But, he said, in the eight years since then authorities had not made any attempt to carry out these orders.

While the village population has grown since then, no other residents received evacuation or demolition orders until June of this year, the lawyer said, when several others received letters from the government threatening them with house demolition. These letters were based on article 64 of the Repossession Law (Hotza’a Lapoal), which says the authorities may also evict other residents, interpreted by the state and the courts to include those in a vaguely-defined “legal relation” with anyone against whom other orders have been issued.

Israeli authorities carried out the demolitions despite pending legal claims to the land that Al-Araqib residents are pursuing in Beer Sheva District Court. Abu Freih, the al-Araqib civil committee spokesman, told Human Rights Watch that over a dozen such land claims are pending. One resident and human rights activist, Nouri al-Okbi, testified in court that the Israeli government confiscated 820 dunams (82 hectares) of land from his family, without compensation, when they were expelled in 1951.

The state contends that the Bedouin have never had recognized land claims in the area. Al-Okbi’s lawyer, Michael Sfard, recently produced evidence in court, however, that appeared to show that the Jewish National Fund had bought land in this area from Bedouin owners during British rule, as did Ottoman authorities before then. This, he said, indicated that the area had customarily been recognized as belonging to the Bedouin.

The demolitions came two days after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made comments in a government meeting, as reported by Israeli media, about the “threat” of losing a Jewish majority in the Negev region.

Israel has demolished thousands of Negev Bedouin homes since the 1970s and over 200 since 2009. Israeli authorities have demolished many structures in al-Araqib in the past, although never the entire village. The Land Administration also began spraying villagers’ crops with herbicides in 2002 as a mechanism to cause evacuation, a practice deemed illegal by the Israeli Supreme Court in 2007.

“Israel employs systematically discriminatory policies in the Negev,” Stork said. “It is tearing down historic Bedouin villages before the courts have even ruled on pending legal claims, and is handing out Bedouin land to allow Jewish farmers to set up ranches.”

Background
Tens of thousands of Bedouin citizens in southern Israel live in “unrecognized” villages like al-Araqib. Because the government considers the villages illegal, it has not connected them to basic services and infrastructure such as water, electricity, sewage treatment, and garbage disposal. Although the villages do not appear on official maps, some existed before the state of Israel was established in 1948. Others sprang up after the Israeli army forcibly displaced Bedouin tribes from their ancestral lands immediately following the 1948 war. Israel passed laws in the 1950s and 1960s enabling the government to lay claim to large areas of the Negev where the Bedouin had formerly owned or used the land. Planning authorities ignored the existence of Bedouin villages when they created Israel’s first master plan in the late 1960s.

Israeli officials contend that they are simply enforcing zoning and building codes and insist that Bedouin can relocate to seven existing government-planned townships or a handful of newly recognized villages. The government-planned townships are seven of the eight poorest communities in Israel and are ill-equipped to handle any influx of new residents. Many – if not most – Bedouin have rejected relocating to the townships, which have minimal infrastructure, high crime rates, scarce job opportunities, and insufficient land for traditional livelihoods such as herding and grazing. In addition, the state requires Bedouin who move to the townships to renounce their ancestral land claims – unthinkable for most Bedouin, who have claims to land passed down from parent to child over generations.

Bedouin constitute 25 percent of the population of the northern Negev, but occupy less than 2 percent of its land. Over the past decade, Israeli authorities have allocated large tracts of land in this region, and public funds, for the creation of private ranches and farms. There are 59 such “individual farms” in the Negev – only one allocated to a Bedouin family and the rest to Jewish families – that stretch over 81,000 dunams of land, greater than the total land area granted to the seven planned Bedouin townships housing 85,000 people. The Israeli human rights organization Adalah says the state has connected these farms to national electric and water grids, despite the fact that some lack proper planning permits. In a series of laws, the latest passed on July 12, the state retroactively legalized such farms and authorized the establishment of more.

Human Rights Watch documented the systematic discrimination that Bedouin citizens face in a130-page report, “Off the Map,” released in March 2008.

Israel ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1991, requiring it to guarantee the right to housing. The United Nations committee responsible for interpreting the covenant has said this means governments can carry out forced evictions only in “the most exceptional circumstances,” and even then only in accordance with human rights principles requiring the government to consult with the affected individuals or communities, identify a clear public interest requiring the eviction, ensure that those affected have a meaningful opportunity to challenge the eviction, and provide appropriate compensation and adequate alternative land and housing arrangements.

Another right at stake is the right to property, set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The 2007 UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, opposed by only two states in the world – the US and Canada – states that indigenous peoples have the right to lands they traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used, and that states should give legal recognition to this. It also says that no relocation of indigenous peoples should take place without their free, prior, and informed consent and only after prior agreement on just and fair compensation.

In December 2008, the Goldberg Commission, appointed by the government in late 2007 to find a solution for the land claims of residents of the unrecognized villages, recommended that the state recognize villages that have a “critical mass” of permanent residents and that do not interfere with other state planning. In practice this would be limited to the recognition of only a few of the dozens of unrecognized villages. The commission also called for the establishment of several claims committees to deal with Bedouin ownership claims and provide financial compensation for expropriated land. In May 2009, the government established the Prawer Committee to outline a plan to implement the Goldberg Commission’s recommendations.

For more Human Rights Watch reporting on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, please visit:
http://www.hrw.org/en/middle-eastn-africa/israel-and-occupied-territories

For more information, please contact:
In Jerusalem, Noga Malkin (English, Hebrew): +972-54-557-7074 (mobile); or malkinn@hrw.org
In Washington, DC, Joe Stork (English): +1-202-299-4925 (mobile); or storkj@hrw.org
In Toronto, Bill Van Esveld (English): +1-416-322-8448; or +1-647-710-1113 (mobile); or vanesvb@hrw.org
In Amman, Fadi Al-Qadi (English, Arabic): +962-79-699-2396; or alqadif@hrw.org

Be’chol Lashon is the Hebrew for “In Every Tongue” and it advocates for the Growth & Diversity of the Jewish People. Today Jews come indeed in every color and every stripes and some leaders do the outreach to embrace them all. Just look at Dr. Lewis Gordon of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, Mr. Romiel Daniel of Queens, New York, The head of Jews of India in our region, Dr. Ephraim Isaac, of the institute for Semitic Studies. They do not look like your stereotype Jew. I met them and was impressed – the latter actually for the first time as we both visited Addis Ababa at the time of the delayed Ethiopian Millennium. Then Rabbi Hailu Paris with his communities in Brooklyn and the Bronx, Ethiopian born and graduae of Yeshiva University, and his Assistant Monica Wiggan (http://www.blackjews.org/Essays/RabbiParisEthiopianTrip.html), and Rabbi Gershom Sizomu of the Abayudaya Jews of Uganda from whom I got a very distinctive kippah with the menorah – of the old temple worked in. Then Dr. Rabson Wuriga of the Hamisi Lemba clan in South Africa and Zimbabwe and so on – in Nigeria, in Peru, in India, in China.

And who has not heard by now of the present White House Rabbi – Cappers Funnye – the cousin of Michelle Obama – and associate director of Bechol Lashon and spiritual leader of Beth Shalom B’nei Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation of Chicago?

The New York regional director of DiverseJews.org is Lacey Schwartz who is also National Outreach Director of BecholLashon.org, assisted by Collier Meyerson and to top it all Davi Cheng, Director of the Los Angeles region is Jewish, Chinese, and Lesbian. As I said it is all a new image of the Jew.

Last night, at the Gallery Bar, 120 Orchard St., NYC there was a Shemspeed Summer Music Festival event.

The two further upcoming events in New York will be on:

Monday, August 2nd – the Shemspeed Hip Hop Fest at Le Poisson Rouge – 158 Bleeker Street NYC Featuring Tes Uno, Ted King & guest Geng Grizlee and others with CD Release parties for “A Tribe Called Tes” and “Move On.”

Thursday, August 5th – Shemspeed Jewish Punk Fest at Pianos, 158 Ludlow Street, NYC Featuring Moshiach Oil & The Groggers.

info on each event above and at http://shemspeed.com/fest

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A Jewish Woman Living in Ethiopia

Rethinking How U.S. Jews Fund Communities Around the World.

The Forward
Published: May 27, 2010

For more than half a century, North America’s Jewish federation system has divided its overseas allocations between the Jewish Agency for Israel and the American Joint Distribution Committee. The Jewish Agency has been dedicated to building up Israel and encouraging aliyah, while the Joint has focused on aiding Jewish communities in need around the globe.

Today, both agencies are working to assert their continued relevance in a changing Jewish world. With aliyah slowing, the Jewish Agency is moving toward embracing a new agenda: promoting the concept of Jewish peoplehood. The JDC, meanwhile, has sought to claim a larger share of the communal pie, which had long been split 75%-25% in the Jewish Agency’s favor.

After a recent round of sniping over the funding issue, the two sides are now stepping back from their public confrontation and recommitting to negotiations over the future of the collective funding arrangement. Underlying this fight, however, is a more fundamental tension over communal funding priorities: Should overseas aid be focused on helping needy Jews and assisting communities that have few resources of their own, or should it be used to bolster Jewish identity?

With this debate raging, the Forward asked a diverse group of Jewish thinkers and communal activists from around the world to weigh in and address the following question: How should North America’s Jewish community be thinking about its priorities and purposes in funding Jewish needs abroad?

New Century, New Priorities

By Yossi Beilin

During the 20th century, the challenges facing world Jewry were the following: rescue of Jews who encountered existential danger, assistance to Israel, helping with the absorption of those who immigrated to new countries and opening the gates for those who were denied the right to emigrate. In the 21st century, ensuring Jewish continuity is the greatest challenge facing the Jewish people.

Yet too often Jewish organizations in the United States and elsewhere remain focused on the challenges of the previous century. (Indeed, Jewish groups were not very receptive when I first proposed the idea for Birthright Israel 17 years ago.)

Ensuring the existence of Jewish life (religious and secular) throughout the world via Jewish education, encounters between young Israeli and Diaspora Jews, creating a virtual Jewish community using new technologies — these must be at the top of the global Jewish agenda. This requires American Jewish philanthropy and leadership, which in turn requires discerning between past and present priorities.

Yossi Beilin, a former justice minister of Israel, is president of the international consulting firm Beilink.

Reviving Polish Jewry

By Konstanty Gebert

The rebirth of Central European Jewish communities after 1989, though numerically not very impressive, remains significant for moral and historical reasons. It is also crucial for Jewish self-understanding. An enormous proportion of American Jews can trace their origins to what used to be Poland alone. This is where much of Diaspora history happened.

Alongside the courage and determination of local Jews, the far-sighted support of several American Jewish organizations and philanthropies made this rebirth possible. In Poland the Joint Distribution Committee, the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation and the Taube Foundation played key roles. Their support has translated not only into Jewish schools and festivals in places once believed to be Jewish-ly dead, but also in most cases into changed relations between local Jewish communities and their fellow citizens as well as clear support for Israel on the part of these countries’ governments.

Yet for all this progress, Central European Jewish communities might never become self-financing. The support given them by American Jewry remains a vital Jewish interest. It must be strengthened.

Konstanty Gebert, a former underground journalist, is a columnist at the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza and founder of the Polish-language Jewish monthly Midrasz.

What We Give Ourselves

By Lisa Leff

More than any Jewish community in history, postwar American Jews have used our prosperity to help Jewish communities around the world. On one level, the greatest beneficiaries of this support have been Jews abroad. But we should also recognize that these philanthropic efforts have shaped our communal values and identity.

Through our international aid, we have dedicated ourselves to universalist and cosmopolitan ideas like tikkun olam and solidarity across borders. In helping disadvantaged and oppressed Jews abroad, we have also deepened our community’s commitments to democracy, human rights and economic justice for all. It’s only natural that Jewish groups pitch in on Haitian earthquake relief and advocate on behalf of oppressed people of all backgrounds.

Whatever the outcome of the federations’ deliberations over how to divide allocations between the Jewish Agency and the Joint Distribution Committee, it is imperative that American Jewry maintain its commitment to our values through supporting international philanthropy.

Lisa Leff is an associate professor of history at American University and the author of “Sacred Bonds of Solidarity: The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in Nineteenth-Century France” (Stanford University Press, 2006).

Putting Identity First

By Jonathan S. Tobin

The choices we face are not between good causes and bad or even indifferent ones but between vital Jewish obligations. But since the decline in giving to Jewish causes means that we must make tough decisions, programs that reinforce Jewish identity and support Zionism both in the Diaspora and in Israel must be accorded a higher priority.

At this point in our history, with assimilation thinning the ranks of Diaspora Jewry and with continuity problems arising even in Israel, the need to instill a sense of membership in the Jewish people is an imperative that cannot be pushed aside. Under the current circumstances, absent an effort that will make Jewish and Zionist education the keynote of our communal life, the notion that Jewish philanthropies or support for Israel can be adequately sustained in the future is simply a fantasy.

Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of Commentary magazine.

Collective Responsibility

By Richard Wexler

One cannot have a meaningful discussion about framing the national Jewish community’s priorities and purposes in funding Jewish needs abroad without first asking the question: Is there actually a collective “North American Jewish community” today?

Collective responsibility has been and remains the foundation upon which the federation system and, therefore, the national Jewish community are built. It is what distinguishes the federations from all other charities. It is embodied in our participation in the adventure of building Israel and in meeting overseas needs through the Jewish Agency and the Joint Distribution Committee, in the dues that federations pay to the Jewish Federations of North America and so much more. But today, federations “bowl alone.”

Collective responsibility gives meaning to kol Yisrael arevim zeh l’zeh — all Jews are responsible for one another. Until federations understand once again that Jewish needs extend beyond the borders of any one community, we cannot have a meaningful priority-setting process for funding Jewish needs abroad.

Richard Wexler is a former chairman of the United Israel Appeal.

Originally published here: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/rethinking-how-u-s-jews-fund-communities-around-the-world-1.292527

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Rabbi Gershom Sizomu and Be’chol Lashon director Diane Tobin at the opening of the Health Center.

Gary Tobin’s Legacy Lives on in New Ugandan Health Center

By Amanda Pazornik

The J Weekly
Published: July 22, 2010

On the day of the grand opening of the Tobin Health Center in Mbale, Uganda, health professionals were already hard at work treating patients inside.

The center was open for business, but that didn’t slow down the lively June 18 celebration, which featured song and dance performances and speakers. About 3,000 people gathered at the center’s grounds to mark the occasion.

Seated under colorful tents was Diane Tobin, director of S.F.-based Be’chol Lashon and wife of the late Gary Tobin, for whom the center is named, along with three of their children, Aryeh, Mia and Jonah.

“Everyone was amazing, friendly and so generous of spirit,” said Tobin, who was visiting Uganda and its Abayudaya Jewish community for the first time. “They were so appreciative of having the center and demonstrated a tremendous willingness to work together. It’s a great model for the rest of the world.”

Andrew Esensten, Be’chol Lashon program coordinator, and Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, spiritual leader of the Abayudaya Jews and the first chief rabbi of Uganda, joined them, in addition to government and medical officials, and representatives from Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities.

The Tobin Health Center is named for Gary Tobin, the founder of the S.F.-based Institute for Jewish and Community Research, of which Be’chol Lashon (“In Every Tongue”) is an initiative. Tobin died one year ago after a long battle with cancer. He was 59.

“He really has left a legacy,” said Debra Weinberg of Baltimore, who attended the opening with her husband, Joe, and their 14-year-old son, Ben. The couple also helped fund the project. “I think he would feel deeply comforted to know it’s improving the lives of people.”

The 4,000-square-foot facility is a major component of the ongoing Abayudaya Community Health and Development Project undertaken by the Abayudaya Executive Council and Be’chol Lashon, a nonprofit that reaches out to Jews of color and helps educate the mainstream community about Jewish diversity.

It cost approximately $250,000 to erect the two-story center, using donations collected over five years. While patients pay for their services, continuous fundraising is a necessity, Tobin said.

Construction began in July 2009, enabling more than 50 Africans from diverse ethnic backgrounds to earn a living.

Stars of David are featured in the window grids, ceilings and floors of the health center, a “lovely expression of their Judaism,” Tobin said. Private rooms make up most of the top floor, with patient wards on the ground floor. A mezuzah is affixed to every door.

A large portrait of Gary Tobin hangs in the lobby.

“It’s so heartwarming,” Diane Tobin said of the visual tribute. “Gary would be so honored to have this health center in the middle of Africa named after him.”

Prior to the opening of the Tobin Health Center, the nearest medical facility to the Abayudaya Jews was Mbale Hospital, an overcrowded and understaffed institution not accessible to all the residents of the region. Tobin said there are other clinics in the area, but they lack the preventive health care measures necessary to respond to the community’s needs.

The Tobin Health Center is licensed by the Ministry of Health and is certified to operate a pharmacy and laboratory. It serves all who seek basic medical care in the region, providing life-saving health services and simultaneously creating jobs.

“The goal is to raise the standard of medical care,” Tobin said.

In addition, rental units on the bottom and top floors of the center will provide more job opportunities for locals. The first business recently opened — a hardware store that sells bags of cement, plumbing equipment and sheet metal — with a beauty salon and video rental outlet in the works.

The center “is rewarding on a number of levels,” said Steven Edwards of Laguna Beach, who, along with his wife, Jill, has been involved with the Abayudaya for six years. “The most obvious is to see this beautiful, clean building. On top of that, local dignitaries noted how lucky Mbale is to have the Jewish community and how much they contribute to the larger community by bringing jobs.”

The Abayudaya Jews comprise a growing, 100-year-old community of more than 1,000 Jews living among 10,000 Christians and Muslims. They live in scattered villages in the rolling, green hills of eastern Uganda. The largest Abayudaya village, Nabagoye, is near Mbale, the seventh-largest city in Uganda and the location of the center.

Research conducted by Be’chol Lashon in 2006 showed that contaminated water and malaria-carrying mosquitoes pose the biggest health risks to the community. A year later, the organization launched the Abayudaya Community Health and Development Project with the drilling of the first well in Nabagoye.

Since then, nearly 1,000 mosquito nets have been purchased and distributed throughout the community.

“Our goal is to respond to the needs of communities,” Tobin said. “If there are other communities that need health centers, we will be there.”

Originally published here: http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/58727/s.f.-researchers-legacy-lives-on-in-new-ugandan-health-center/

UN TO SPOTLIGHT MEDIA’S ROLE IN PROMOTING MIDDLE EAST PEACE

The role of the media in fostering dialogue and understanding between Israelis and Palestinians will be the focus of a two-day United Nations meeting to be held later this week in Portugal’s capital, Lisbon.

The upcoming media seminar, which starts on Thursday, will be the 17th such gathering organized by the UN Department of Public Information (DPI), and aims to sensitize public opinion on the issue of Palestine and the peace process.

With this year marking the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the landmark resolution 1325, which stresses the importance of giving women equal participation and full involvement in peace and security matters, their role in achieving peace will also be discussed.

Some 120 people from the Middle East, including both Israelis and Palestinians, and from around the world are set to attend, including Government officials, representatives of civil society organizations, academics, journalists and others.

Five panel sessions will be held during the seminar on topics such as the role of the Israeli and Palestinian media in reducing tensions, the use of new media to bring about positive change, and the part that mayors from both sides can play in advancing peace.

The participants will include Jorge Sampaio, the former Portuguese president and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations, set up under UN auspices to promote better cross-cultural relations worldwide.

Kiyo Akasaka, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, and Robert Serry, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, will also address the event.

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UN POLITICAL CHIEF UNDERSCORES NEED FOR DIRECT ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN TALKS

With efforts to move to serious negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians on achieving a two-State solution having reached a “critical juncture,” the top United Nations political official today underlined the need for direct negotiations between the two sides to begin as soon as possible.

“These talks are essential for ending the 1967 occupation, ending the conflict and resolving all core issues between the parties, including Jerusalem, borders, refugees, security settlements and water,” Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs B. Lynn Pascoe told the Security Council today.

Six rounds of proximity talks facilitated by United States Special Envoy George Mitchell have been held since they began in May.

The goal of the diplomatic Quartet – comprising the United Nations, the US, Russia and the European Union – continues to be US-facilitated direct negotiations as soon as possible, Mr. Pascoe said, urging Israel and Palestinians to take advantage of the current opportunity to make progress.

Direct talks, he noted, could boost “confidence in the possibility of genuine progress on the core issues and on the ground, including restraint in Jerusalem, implementation of Roadmap obligations on settlements and further measures to empower the Palestinian Authority.”

Earlier this month, in a move welcomed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other officials, the Israeli Government announced it was increase the scope and quantity of materials allowed into Gaza.

Since then, new food and productive items have entered the Strip and the volume of imports into the area has risen steadily, with a 40 per cent increasing in the number of truckloads entering Gaza every week.

“While these are positive steps forward, we hope they can be enhanced to address the deplorable conditions in the Strip,” Mr. Pascoe said, calling for additional steps to be taken to allow exports and movement of people, as well as to streamline procedures for approval for projects.

He also announced at today’s meeting that agreements agreed by the Office of the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO) on ensuring the cargo onboard Turkish ships have been implemented.

Those ships were part of an aid flotilla intercepted by the Israeli military on 31 May, resulting in the deaths of nine civilians and the wounding of at least 30 others.

Mr. Pascoe said that arrangements are also being made to transfer material carried by a Libyan-sponsored vessel, which arrived in Egypt last week, to Gaza.

“Such convoys are not helpful to resolving the basic economic problems in Gaza and needlessly carry the potential for escalation,” he told the meeting, which heard from dozens of speakers.

During the reporting period, Palestinian militant groups fired 41 rockets and mortars into southern Israel, causing no injuries, while the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) carried out six air strikes and 21 incursions, killing four Gazans, including one alleged militant, and injuring 23 others, the Under-Secretary-General said.

Turning to Lebanon, he said that the situation in that country remains stable. The Lebanese Parliament has continued talks on draft legislation on the civil rights of Palestinian refugees.

“Consensus appears to be within reach and the United Nations would welcome this as a first step,” Mr. Pascoe said.

Paul Badji, Chairman of the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, said at the meeting that serious direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians “can only be successful in an atmosphere of mutual trust and confidence in a comprehensive, just and lasting outcome.”

This, he said, requires both sides to implement their obligations under the Roadmap.

The Committee remains “alarmed” by Israel’s refusal to heed international calls to halt settlement construction in the occupied Palestinian territory, including in East Jerusalem.

Also addressing the Council today was Israeli Ambassador Gabriela Shalev, who said her country called for direct negotiations with Palestinians with “no preconditions, no delays.

“With Jerusalem and Ramallah only 10 minutes apart, direct negotiations are the only path to bridge the existing gaps,” she stressed.

Ms. Shalev emphasized the need for mutual recognition, noting that Israel’s recognition of “a Palestinian State as the nation-State of the Palestinian people must be met with an acknowledgment that Israel is the nation-State of the Jewish people.”

For his part, the Palestinian representative, Riyad Mansour, told the Council that “it seems strange that such a volatile situation persists in light of the international and regional efforts being exerted for revival of the peace process.”

Although his side has taken part in the proximity talks in good faith, “the same cannot be said for Israel,” which he said has “repeatedly challenged those talks with illegal, reckless actions.”

The following comes from

http://iranliberty.com/nukes/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=11690

and it is very disturbing to us. We received the link in an e-mail and it shows clearly that the Rutgers University Center for Middle Eastern Studies has on its faculty a clear bigot originating from Iran, Dr. Afshin Razani, who should not hold the position he was entrusted with – the shaping of the mind of a new generation of Americans whom he feeds plain hate-mongering rubbish.

Yes we know the Middle East is very complex as he says, but he is not the man to unravel it – this because he speaks untruth and half-truths and smears past Administrations because he just wants to wish Israel away from its home in the Middle East.

We know the Director of the Center at Rutgers, Dr. Hooshang Amirahmadi, an Iranian-American scholar, and we are surprised that he keeps this sort of staff in his court – Dr. Razani is not the man that will help you understand neither Iran nor Palestine.

Furthermore, when you read the rubbish we posted here and which comes all of it from above link, you will also see that as Rutgers University is a State University – a New Jersey Public University – the implication that what is taught at the center is Islamic Religion, may in effect undermine the  legal status that covers the establishment of the Center.

We follow up here with what appears in the English part of above link

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Profile

Dr. Razani received his BS in economics and public administration from Pahlavi University, Shiraz, Iran. After completing military service, he traveled to the United States and received his master’s degree in economics and his PhD in sociology from Southern Illinois University. Dr. Razani has taught economic and sociology courses including Introductory Economics, Introductory Sociology, Social Stratification, Social Change, Contemporary Social Problems, and Sociological Theory, at both undergraduate and graduate levels at Southern Illinois University, Ramapo College (Mahwah, NJ), and Montclair State University (Montclair, NJ). He has done extensive research on subjects related to the politics of Iran and the Middle East, focusing upon issues of democracy, social justice, and social movements, and has delivered public lectures and speeches on these topics throughout the United States and Canada. He has authored and translated numerous analytical articles on Iran and the Middle East for such publications as Iran Today, and Akhgar in the United States, and Tchissta, a monthly journal in Tehran

Afshin Razani, Ph.D.
Instructor in Middle Eastern Studies
Assistant Director, Public & Executive Affairs
Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Lucy Stone Hall, B-327
54 Joyce Kilmer Avenue
Piscataway, NJ 08854
Tel: 732-445-8444, ext. 18
Fax: 732-445-8446
Email:  arazani at rci.rutgers.edu

The People Perceived As A Threat To Security

An Article by Randa A. Kayyali

Emergency Relief and Reconstruction Funds for Lebanon

How can you help – we took this out because we do not believe we want to help Dr. Razani

……………….

Pols undermine U.S. by pandering to Israel  – Home News Tribune Online 06/5/07 – BY HASSAN MAHMOUD

According to a recently published book, “Presidential Courage” by presidential historian Michael Beschloss, Harry Truman was an anti-Semitic bigot who called New York City a “Kike town” and said, “Those goddamned Jews are never satisfied. Jesus Christ couldn’t please them when he was here on earth, so how could anyone expect that I would have any luck?” While staying in Independence to interview Truman in 1961, the talk-show host David Susskind asked him why he never invited him into his home. Truman replied, “You are a Jew, David, and no Jew has ever been in the house.”

By the approach of the presidential election of 1948, Truman’s approval rating was very low. At that time, the United Nations was debating the partition of Palestine between the indigenous Palestinians and the immigrant Jews from Europe. The White House counsel, Clark Clifford, strongly suggested that Truman recognize a Jewish State for which the Jewish donors would support his campaign. As per the book, John Kennedy, allegedly, later insisted that recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast because a Zionist bagman handed the president $2 million in cash in a suitcase. On the other side, Secretary of State George Marshall, whom Truman described as the “great one of the age” and the “architect of victory who won the war,” told the president that if he followed Clifford’s advice and if he were to vote in the election he would vote against him. He and Assistant Secretary of State Loy Henderson and Under Secretary Robert Lovett warned that the founding of a Jewish State in Palestine would be a strategic mistake as it would throw away many years of hard work with the Arabs, would jeopardize oil supplies, turn the whole Arab world into our enemy and make Israel a burden on the United States.

With the hypocritical personality of a U.S. president as such, one wonders how national vital decisions were made.

Since 1948, many upheavals occurred in the Middle East resulting in many wars and destruction and loss of hundreds of thousands of lives — including thousands of Americans — and periodic economic turmoil due to disruption of oil supply, plus the birth of international terrorism. All of these catastrophes could have been alleviated or minimized if we could have wisely managed the aftermath of the creation of Israel in the midst of a sea of Arab and Muslim nations by evenhandedly forcing the adherence of the antagonists to the United Nations resolutions of 1947, which demarcated the boundaries of two states — Palestine and Israel.

Unfortunately, our politicians never learned from the past. When President Bush is asked about the fallacy of the allegations upon which the ruinous Iraq war was waged, his recent answer during his news conference of May 24 was that a main reason for the war was Saddam’s payment to the families of the killed Palestinians who attacked Israel. When he speaks of the dispute with Iran, he always invokes the danger of Iran to Israel. Can’t our politicians stop holding our security and economic interest hostages to the whims of the extremist Israelis who are pursuing colonialist policies in the Middle East and always demand from us to back their follies even by scarifying the lives of our soldiers and our economic welfare?

Amazingly, at the time when a number of our soldiers are kidnapped in Iraq, some New Jersey politicians thought that the fate of our kidnapped soldiers is not worth as much as the fate of three Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah and Hamas. Assemblyman Eric Monoz and state Sen. Thomas H. Kean Jr., both R-Union, Somerset, Essex, Morris, sponsored resolutions that call on the United Nations to take action to help free the three Israeli soldiers. Munoz stated: “I want Israeli citizens here and abroad and the government of Israel to know that the United States — and in particular the State of New Jersey — stands united with them in their efforts to bring these young men home safely.” One wishes that these comforting words and strong resolutions are spoken and made on behalf of the missing Americans and their families. Shame on those politicians. Their pandering to foreign interests blinded them to the interests of America.

“Be Counted” columnist Hassan Mahmoud is a resident of Westfield. “Be Counted” columnists are members of the public. Their opinions do not represent those of the Home News Tribune.
A New Jersey few know: Paterson’s thriving Arab community
The Star-Ledger, Sunday, April 08, 2007

BY MILTON VIORST

I enter Paterson over the Broadway hill past Eastside Park, where as a kid I biked on clear days, turning to gaze at the Manhattan skyline a dozen miles away. The park is where I caught fireflies in a jar on hot summer nights and belly-flopped on a sled on cold winter afternoons, where I sold sodas to picnickers on Sundays and once tried out, unsuccessfully, for the high school baseball team. Just below the park, in the direction of downtown, is Derrom Avenue, whose elegant mansions long advertised the wealth of Paterson’s commercial aristocracy. Incongruously, amidst these mansions now stands the Islamic Center, Paterson’s principal mosque, symbol of the city’s latest transformation.

Paterson, it is widely said, is home to America’s second-largest Arab community. Dearborn, Mich., is first. Paterson is also the hub of several hundred thousand Arabs living in northern New Jersey. Yet, growing up, how come I knew no Arabs? The city, rather handsome and well-kept in those days, was shaped by solidly middle-class Irish, Italian and Jewish communities. Since Alexander Hamilton persuaded George Washington to harness the power of the roaring falls of the Passaic River, its wealth derived from industry, but in the 20th century it also served as a commercial hub for several hundred thousand residents of the North Jersey region. My grandfather came from Poland in 1900 to work in Paterson’s silk mills, the industrial core; my father, after a turn in the mills, found retailing more compatible. The earliest Arab immigrants were Christian Syrians drawn from the textile workshops of Aleppo; Muslims, a second wave that began in the 1920s, preferred to set up small shops. By the 1940s, Arabs were an identifiable community, but I never saw them. Paterson’s ethnic groups were largely strangers to one another, gathered on their own turf around their churches, later their synagogues, then their mosques. Though we lived in neighborhoods that were tightly juxtaposed, only rarely did we cross the lines…

More

ADC-NJ wishes to thank all of our supporters for making our 9th Annual Banquet a great success. The event, which took place at the Grand Ballroom of the Hasbrouck Heights Hilton, was attended by approximately 300 supporters and members.

This year’s Achievement Award was presented to Ms. Sarah El-Shazly, of the Office of the New Jersey Attorney General and the Recognition Award was presented to The Mental Health Association in Passaic County.

Among the many dignitaries present were: Ambassador Shereef EL-Kholy, Consul General of Egypt in New York; Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein; representatives from the offices of Congressman Scott Garrett and Congressman Bill Pascrell; Joe Orlando, CEO of Barnert Hospital; Andre Sayegh, Member, Paterson Board of Education and Chief of Staff for State Sen. Girgenti; from the New Jersey Commission on Civil Rights: Chairman, Hon. John Campbell and Commissioner, Hon. Dr. Joan Rivitz; and from the Rutgers University Center for Middle Eastern Studies were: Director Dr. Hooshang Amirahmadi, Dr. Afshin Razani, Dr. Charles Haberl and staff member Paola Rizzuto.

Also present were representatives from the following organizations: The Arab American Family Support Center of NJ (Tanweer), ADC-NY, ADC-Greater Philadelphia Area, American Muslim Union (AMU), Egyptian American Professional Society (EAPS), Egyptian American Group, Islamic Center of Passaic County (ICPC), Islamic Center of Jersey City, NAAP, New Jersey Muslim Lawyer’s Association, Palestinian Heritage Foundation (PHF), and Wafa House.

We would like to thank our keynote speaker, Senator Lincoln Chafee, for offering the ADC-NJ audience an honest, sensible and realistic approach to the Palestinian-Israeli Peace Process. We offer our sincerest thanks to all who attended and helped to make this years Banquet a success.

Please let us know if you have any suggestions as to how we can make next year’s Banquet even more successful. Please email your comments and suggestions to adc@adcnj.us

Photos, media coverage of the event and the keynote speaker’s ( Sen. Lincoln Chafee) speech among other speeches will be posted shortly

Middle East studies in the News

Mideast Program Growing in Diversity [on Middle East studies at Rutgers, Peter Chelkowski of NYU]

by Katie O’Connell
The Daily Targum [Rutgers student newspaper]
December 11, 2006
http://www.dailytargum.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticlePrinterFriendly&uStory_id=77fc6395-f79a-4648-9f75-c9fd081f9468

The world’s fastest growing religion has a growing department at the University studying it.

The Rutgers University Center for Middle Eastern Studies is a program through which students can explore the diverse canvas of cultures, societies, religions, languages, histories and politics of the countries that comprise the region of the Middle East.

“The Middle East is much more complex than it appears on the surface,” said Afshin Razani, an instructor in the Middle Eastern Studies Department.

“Islam is the fastest growing religion, with nearly 1.3 billion followers who come from many different parts of the world,” said Paola Rizzuto, staff member at the center.

“Despite this fact, Islam is still one of the least understood faiths.”

The region of the Middle East cannot be defined or generalized in any one specific manner, and one must be able to understand the complexity and diversity of the Middle East, as to avoid any one-sided interpretations, Razani said.

Razani said some of the most popular courses of the department are Introduction to the Modern Middle East, a required course for a major and minor in the program, and courses that focus on contemporary Middle Eastern issues and politics.

The department’s language courses are also very popular, Razani said. Students can take courses in Persian, Arabic, Hebrew and, as of this semester, Turkish.

Currently, the center is expanding and will be introducing a contemporary Arab studies program and a class called Islam and Democracy in the near future, Razani said.

The center’s Web site is also undergoing a major overhaul to make it more interactive and informative, said Razani.

The expansion of the program is due in part to the help of community leaders. The center strives to be involved both with the Rutgers community and surrounding communities, said Razani.

A part of this community involvement is achieved through programs the center hosts throughout the semester.

This semester, the center hosted the speaker Azar Nafisi, author of “Reading Lolita in Tehran”; a unity iftaar, breaking of the fast during Ramadan; a fundraising dinner that focused on Islam in the Contemporary world and Gaza: Pictorial of a Humanitarian Crisis with AP photographer and Washington reporter on Middle East Affairs correspondent Mohammed Omer, according to an e-mail from Rizzuto.

The center is planning to host several more events next semester, Rizzuto said.

The center’s fundraiser event last Thursday, entitled “Rituals in Islam,” was meant to increase awareness about the Islamic faith and was attended by 60 to 70 people, Rizzuto said.

The event hosted Emmy award-winning journalist Anisa Mehdi and Peter Chelkowski, New York University professor of Middle Eastern Studies.

In addition to hosting events that educate the community on Middle Eastern cultures, the center also works with outside groups such as Global Citizen 2000, a program that will enable high school teachers to increase the quantity and quality of teaching about the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and globalization, according to the Global Citizen 2000 Web site.

“As members of the Rutgers University community, we are in a unique position to foster unity and to raise cultural awareness,” Rizzuto said. “New Jersey is the most diverse state in America, and this is reflected in the demographics of our community of scholars.”

Note: Articles listed under “Middle East studies in the News” provide information on current developments concerning Middle East studies on North American campuses. These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of Campus Watch and do not necessarily correspond to Campus Watch’s critique

Maradona out as coach as Argentina’s soccer coach.

AP – Argentina’s national soccer team coach Diego Armando Maradona listens to a question from the press prior … Also Brazil’s soccer team gets new coach Reuters.
By DEBORA REY, Associated Press Writer – Tue Jul 27, 2010.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – Diego Maradona was given the boot as Argentina’s soccer coach before he could resign. His stint as coach of the Albiceleste ended far less successfully than his time as a player with the national team. The Argentine Football Association, which hired the former star in November 2008, said Tuesday that his contract will not be renewed. The decision came 3 1/2 weeks after his team, led by star Lionel Messi, was eliminated from the World Cup with a humiliating 4-0 loss to Germany in the quarterfinals.

“Diego shut himself off to any change,” executive committee member Luis Segura said on Argentine television. “Diego has all the right to do what he wants. But so does AFA.”

The federation had offered Maradona a four-year contract through the 2014 World Cup, but Maradona said he would do so only if his entire staff remained. That was unacceptable to AFA president Julio Grondona. He had asked for several assistants to be replaced, including Maradona’s close friend Alejandro Mancuso. The federation said its executive committee unanimously decided to not keep Mardona.

AFA spokesman Ernesto Cherquis Bialo called the decision “very painful” but said there was no way to solve the impasse.
“The president said that there was a significant difference between what AFA wanted to achieve and Maradona’s aspirations for the future,” Cherquis Bialo said. “There was a wide gap, and it was impossible to narrow it.” The spokesman hinted, however, there might be a role in the future for a man with an unpredictable history.

“This marks the end of a first chapter with Mr. Maradona,” Cherquis Bialo said. “The doors to this house, as always, will be open to him.”

Youth team manager Sergio Batista was appointed interim coach for the Aug. 11 exhibition at Ireland, which will be followed by a Sept. 7 home exhibition against world champion Spain. Possible permanent successors include two club coaches in Argentina: Alejandro Sabella of Estudiantes and Miguel Russo of Racing.

Asked about the full-time coach, Cherquis Bialo said: “The people who were in the meeting have no name in their imaginations. It has just been announced that the contract with the coach will not be renewed. And so, a new stage begins.”

The 49-year-old Maradona became Argentina’s coach in November 2008, replacing Alfio Basile and taking over a team he led to the 1986 World Cup title and the 1990 final.

He had little coaching experience, and his team absorbed two of the worst losses in the country’s history: a 6-1 rout at Bolivia in World Cup qualifying and the World Cup defeat to Germany.

Argentina attacked with flair in South Africa, with Messi setting up scoring strikes by Gonzalo Higuain and Carlos Tevez.

Maradona, dressed on the sideline in a gray suit, was an enthusiastic cheerleader, but that could not compensate for his team’s tactical deficiencies. The loss to Germany exposed frailties on defense and lack of midfield speed.

Messi, widely regarded as the game’s best player, left with World Cup without scoring a goal. Maradona never explained why Messi — he was left to roam the field on his own — wasn’t scoring. “Nobody ever told me where to play. So I shouldn’t have to tell Messi where to play, either,” Maradona said.

Maradona, who has fought cocaine and alcohol addiction, grew up in a Buenos Aires slum, and his escape from poverty has endeared him to many. But he has worn out his welcome in other quarters.

Maradona ruffled the government of President Cristina Fernandez, who twice invited the coach to meet with her. But cabinet chief Anibal Fernandez said Maradona failed to respond or answer the phone, forcing the president’s secretaries to leave messages.

Fernandez had been openly supportive of keeping Maradona as coach, and one legislator has proposed building a monument to honor him. Two weeks ago, the federation offered Maradona the chance to extend his contract. But Maradona put off meeting with Grondona to travel to Venezuela at the invitation of a friend — President Hugo Chavez.

Maradona’s relationship with key individuals in Argentine soccer also was tense. He barred federation leaders and businessmen with commercial ties to the organization from practices in South Africa while allowing reporters to enter.

Still, Maradona had many supporters. “I want Maradona to stay,” Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo said Tuesday in an interview on radio La Red. “We will support his decision. If he leaves we will miss him.”

Added team trainer Fernando Signorini: “I have no doubt they didn’t want him. Maradona is like a stone in the shoe of power.”