JFNA condemns wave of religious extremism and violence in Israel

Leadership Briefing

Jewish Federations Condemn Wave of Religious Extremism and Violence in Israel December 27, 2011 The Jewish Federations of North America today expressed strong condemnation of a recent wave of religious extremism and violence in Israel. The situation has been highlighted in the media in recent days, which has focused on the verbal abuse of an eight-year-old girl in the city of Bet Shemesh, by a group of ultra-Orthodox men. Other issues have included the forced segregation of genders on some public bus routes – despite the fact that the Israeli Supreme Court has outlawed this practice – and the unofficial ban on any female image in advertising in some areas. “Our movement includes Jewish people from all streams and persuasions. Yet, despite our differing backgrounds, we unite today to strongly condemn, with one clear and loud voice, all acts of violence, intimidation, coercion and extremism, especially those that are undertaken, incredibly, in the name of Judaism,” said Jerry Silverman, president and CEO of JFNA. “We know that ‘deracheha darchei noam’ – the Torah’s paths are ways of peace. We stand firmly and resolutely behind the voices of reason and moderation in Bet Shemesh and throughout Israel.” As a result of significant media attention in recent days, many members of the Israeli Government, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have spoken out publicly to condemn the extremist behavior. Similarly, the police have stepped up efforts and made a number of arrests. “We applaud Prime Minister Netanyahu and other members of the government for their strong words condemning recent acts of extremism, and urge the government and the Israeli police to work hard to stamp out this stain on Israeli society,” said Rebecca Caspi, JFNA’s senior vice president for Israel and Overseas. Earlier today, thousands took to the streets in Bet Shemesh to protest the acts of extremism, drawing increased media attention and scrutiny to the city.  Michael Gelman, JFNA’s chair of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees, said, ”We reach out to the Ultra Orthodox community, and in particular, their spiritual leaders. We plead for them to break their silence and speak out firmly and decisively. An act of this nature can help heal Israeli society and restore their image as moral, upstanding, Torah-abiding citizens.” Stuart Kurlander, president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, which has a relationship with the Bet Shemesh/Mate Yehuda Region through the Jewish Agency for Israel’s Partnership Together program, also condemned the recent violence, intimidation and other extremist acts. “We have been working in partnership with the city of Bet Shemesh for 10 years and have come to know the community and its people very well. We stand with the law-abiding population of Beit Shemesh, and especially those groups working at conciliation and moderation in the city,” said Kurlander. “At the same time, we urge Bet Shemesh’s mayor, Moshe Abutbol, to put a stop to this religious extremism and violence, and help to rebuild a harmonious and thriving community.” For more information, please contact: Dani Wassner atdani.wassner@jewishfederations.org

NYTimes: Bias in Ron Paul's newsletters draws new attention

New Focus on Incendiary Words in Paul’s Newsletters

By JIM RUTENBERG and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

Published: December 19, 2011,   New York Times

Emerging as a real Republican contender in Iowa, RepresentativeRon Paul of Texas is receiving new focus for decades-old unbylined columns in his political newsletters that included racist, anti-gay and anti-Israel passages that he has since disavowed.

Source:  

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/us/politics/bias-in-ron-pauls-newsletters-draws-new-attention.html?_r=1

Medoff: Iowa and the Jews, Then and Now

Iowa and the Jews, Then and Now

 

by Rafael Medoff    http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=250439    12/21/2011

 

(Dr. Rafael Medoff is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, and coauthor, with Prof. Sonja Schoepf Wentling, of the forthcoming book 'Herbert Hoover and the Jews: The Origins of the "Jewish Vote" and Bipartisan Support for Israel.')

 

Since there are barely 6,000 Jews in the entire state of Iowa --less than two-tenths of one percent of the population-- one would not have expected Jewish concerns to attract much attention in the campaign preceding next month's Republican caucuses. Yet suddenly the Jewish State, and its American Jewish supporters, find themselves front and center as the competition in Iowa enters the home stretch.

 

Two prominent journalists who are not particularly sympathetic to the Republicans, Hemi Shalev of the Israeli daily Ha'aretz and Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, warned last week of dire consequences if the candidates for the Republican nomination continue to make strongly pro-Israel statements. 

 

According to Shalev, Iowan Republican voters are Bible-thumpin' fanatics so itching for "the war between Gog and Magog" that they do not mind if pro-Israel Republican candidates "inflame" the Arab world.  A second problem, Shalev claims, is that Iowan voters and other "ordinary Americans" may start to "wonder about the sway this distant country [Israel] holds over American politics and about the motives of the Jews that support it." In other words, they may become anti-Semitic.

 

Some years ago, as a Herbert Hoover Presidential Fellow, I spent a little time in and around West Branch, Iowa, Hoover's birth place, where his presidential library is located and where I did research on Hoover's interest in Zionism and his response to the Holocaust.

 

None of the Iowans I met seemed terribly anxious about an impending Apocalypse.  I doubt Gog and Magog are any more on the minds of the average Iowan voter than they are on the mind of Hemi Shalev and, in fact, perhaps less so, since those biblical characters actually originate in the Hebrew Bible, which is part of the Israeli school curriculum.

As for Shalev's notion that "ordinary Americans" in Iowa and elsewhere may turn anti-Semitic, I wonder what he thinks of his colleague Thomas Friedman's December 14 column in the Times. Friedman asserted that the standing ovations Israel's prime minister received during his recent address to the United States Congress were "bought and paid for by the Israel lobby." Doesn't that sort of rhetoric feed the canard about Jewish power to which Shalev alluded?

 

What was remarkable about the applause for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was its breadth. Liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans clapped with apparently equal enthusiasm. Congressmen from Iowa and Montana and Utah, who do not depend on Jewish votes or campaign contributions, expressed their support for Israel as strongly as those who represent districts where there are many Jewish voters. It was a striking display of bipartisanship.

 

Interestingly, Iowa's own political history offers two of the most notable examples of America's legacy of bipartisan support for Israel. 

 

One was Guy Gillette, born and raised in the northwest Iowan town of Cherokee, who served three terms in the U.S. Senate. After news of the Holocaust was confirmed in the United States in late 1942, Gillette became the most vocal Senate supporter of the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe (better known as the Bergson Group), a maverick activist group that pressured the Roosevelt administration to rescue Jews from the Nazis.  Gillette was a Democrat, and challenging the policies of his own party's president, in the middle of a world war, was not the most popular thing to do.

 

"It is not a Jewish problem alone," Gillette wrote in the preamble to his 1943 resolution urging FDR to create a refugee rescue agency. "It is a Christian problem and a problem for enlightened civilization." I recently called author and editor Miriam Chaikin, who worked in Gillette's Senate office in the 1940s, to ask about Gillette's motives. "He was a Bible-believing Christian," she told me. "He felt it was his religious duty to help the Jews." 

 

Iowa's most famous Republican likewise championed the cause of Jewish refugees. Herbert Hoover, too, was a devout Christian with a heartfelt concern about the Jews, even if he was not known to wear his Quaker faith on his sleeve. In 1939, ex-president Hoover jettisoned his anti-immigration past and endorsed legislation to admit 20,000 German Jewish refugee children. During the Holocaust, Hoover supported the Bergson Group's rescue campaign and, in 1944, he brought about the GOP's first-ever adoption of a party plank calling for rescue of Jewish refugees and creation of a Jewish State. That forced the Democrats to adopt a nearly-identical plank. Bipartisan support for Israel has been a part of American political culture ever since.

Both Democrats and Republicans in America's bible belt have found in their religious faith strong reasons to feel positively about Israel and the Jewish people.  That may not always sit well with the pundits, but it has been a healthy part of mainstream American politics for more than six decades and deserves more thoughtful consideration than it has received.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NYT: Finding Fault in the Palestinian Messages That Aren’t So Public

Finding Fault in the Palestinian Messages That Aren't So Public

 

 

Many analysts say that what Palestinian leaders tell their own people in their own language — as opposed to statements tailored for the rest of the world — is the truest reflection of their actual beliefs.

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/world/middleeast/palestinian-messages-dont-match-israeli-group-says.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all%3Fsrc%3Dtp&smid=fb-share

 

 

Please join the JCRC page on Facebook at  http://facebook.com/JewishCurrentEvents

 

Or  text message to 40404 and state:   follow jewishcurrentevents

 

Or join us on twitter at: http://twitter.com/jewishnewsblog

 

Comments to jcrc@dmjfed.org

 

Fatah prevents Palestinians from meeting with Israeli Leftists

Hatem Abdel Kader, a senior Fatah operative, announced that his faction has declared “war” on meetings aimed at promoting “normalization” with Israel.

Protests again thwart Israeli-Palestinian meeting

www.jpost.com

Palestinian political activists protest meetings designed to normalize relations for second time in a week.

Upcoming Events! An update from the Jewish Federation

Up-coming Events !

  The first candle of Hanukkah is lit Tuesday evening, December 20. Happy Hanukkah from Jewish Federation!

 

 

1. From Rabbi Yossi Jacobson  jrcspark@msn.com   Lubavitch of Iowa will hold its ceremony of lighting the Grand Menorah in front of Maccabees Kosher Deli throughout Chanukkah.  First night lighting, Tuesday, is at 5 pm with Gov. Branstad.  The full schedule is appended. 

2. Wednesday, December 21 6 – 8 pm, Judaic Resource Center-Lubavitch of Iowa presents “ Hanukkah on Ice,” at the Brenton Skating Plaza.  $4.  RSVP to jrcspark@msn.com

3. Wed., December 21. Java Jews Klezmer Band performs a Hanukkah program  8 – 11 pm  El Bait Shop Restaurant/Bar,  200 SW 2^nd St., DSM

 

4.  Thursday, December 29, 6:30pm 

     New Years Party at the Iowa Jewish Life Center! 

 

 

5.  Friday, December 30, at the Temple.  Speaker: Shmuel Rosner, along with joint Tifereth-Temple service.

  Shmuel Rosner, Political commentator on the Middle East, known for his Jerusalem Post blog.     Sponsored by the congregations, JFed Forum, JCRC, and Jewish Federation.

 

 

6.  Tuesday, January 3, 7 pm.   The Iowa Presidential Caucuses.   Consult the Des Moines Register for caucus locations.

 

 

6. Wednesday, January 4, noon at the Temple.   JCRC Lunch Discussion. 

 

 Rabbi Kaufman will speak about “Israel as discussed at the Union for Reform Judaism General Assembly.”    Bring your own lunch or order from Maccabees Deli through jcrc@dmjfed.org

 

        Link : http://www.humanrights.gov/2011/12/19/remarks-by-the-president-at-the-71st-general-assembly-of-the-union-for-reform-judaism/

 

 

 

Join the Jewish Federation’s Facebook page:  http://www.facebook.com/JewishDesMoines

 

Join the JCRC’s Facebook page:  http://www.facebook.com/JewishCurrentEvents

 

The Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines is online at http://jewishdesmoines.org

 

 

 

 

73bg94, edfge4ditfuw.
http://notabrownbag.com/wp-content/plugins/akismet/images/pzpv.html
6scd0zfiy1c m2k99yq a0vwv8cdd2, 4akmbw1muwb8 41b7dyhmct. rlrmg3nfqkd1
ore6xnz.