Morris Berman B&N Talk

Morris Berman Talk at Barnes & Noble, Washington, D.C May 6, 2006

MK Vilan: Unite Meretz and Labor

Our Israeli khaver, Avshalom (Abu) Vilan, MK, has released a bombshell in calling for his own Meretz party to merge with Labor. Not unexpectedly, this has not made him popular within the Meretz Knesset caucus. Abu may have had the misfortune of being a premature prophet. He also may have committed a tactical error in raising this publicly at this time, especially with Labor looking so weak in the wake of the Lebanon war and Meretz seeming to be holding its own. On the other hand, Labor’s weakness may be precisely the window of opportunity needed by Meretz to begin a process that would forge a reinvigorated and unified Zionist left in Israel.

One source reporting on this is Haaretz, Sept. 28. The following is Ron Skolnik’s abridged translation of an article that appeared in Hebrew on Maariv's website:

MK Avshalom Vilan, representative of the kibbutzim in Meretz, is calling for a unification of Meretz and Labor. "Meretz as a party has spent itself and must cease to exist as an independent entity and join up with the Labor Party," Vilan wrote in "HaDaf HaYarok," the kibbutz movement newspaper. According to Vilan, Kadima is a dead horse, and a few khaverim should be brought back from it, and unite forces between [Labor and Meretz] in order to create a single front. "When I look at the political map, we point the way, but we’re not on it." Vilan added: "We’re always right, but always alone and don’t influence processes."


About a month ago, Maariv first publicized the initiative to unify the two parties, which emanated from the kibbutz representatives in the two parties. But that did not diminish the anger this evening when Vilan published his letter. Most of the anger at Vilan came from the members of his party, who are fuming about the initiative.

Meretz faction chair, MK Zehava Galon, sharply criticized Vilan, saying he wasn’t relevant. "Meretz is more relevant than ever. Its necessity is clear, against the background of Labor’s failures in all spheres. But in Meretz there are elements who are not relevant, since they view themselves as a pale appendage of the Labor Party".

The assessment in Meretz was that if there will eventually be any unification between the parties, it will be when the historic remnants of Mapam, the Kibbutz Artzi wing in Meretz, will become part of Labor. "The entire party will not unite with Labor," said a senior figure in Meretz. "Maybe a small part of the Kibbutz Artzi. Meretz will continue to exist, and if Abu wants to leave, he’s invited to do so, and the sooner the better." It should be noted that when Amir Peretz was elected to lead Labor, ex-Meretz Chairman Yossi Sarid claimed that the differences between the parties had blurred, and that a union between them should be sought.

Vilan has been roundly criticized by senior Meretz officials. "Abu needs to cause a provocation so that they know he exists," said a high-ranking party members. "He’s ‘Left-Light’. Whoever was elected on behalf of Meretz and says such a thing is kicking the people who brought him into Knesset". Voices in Meretz also said Abu’s call is "stupefying, just at the time when the Labor Party is in a tough spot and losing the trust of the public, while Meretz is keeping its strength."

Haim Oron, the senior representative of the kibbutzim in Meretz, who is very popular in the party, said this is not the time to deal with the next elections. "I don’t understand why Abu is bringing up this issue at this time and what he wants. It doesn’t make sense… The last elections and recent events proved that Meretz is a stable element that talks about peace moves and changing social priorities. That’s the job of Meretz. When the political picture becomes more clear, we’ll discuss options," said Oron.

Baskin: Sad Story of Sam Bahour

Lilly Rivlin, Meretz USA’s president, writes: This makes me mad.... We have been in denial too long. One of the most important sections in the article below is "We Israelis should be interested in keeping Sam Bahour and the thousands of others like Sam as our neighbors in the West Bank. The chances for building real peace increase when people like Sam Bahour can be our neighbor. Shame on any government of Israel that would force people like Sam to leave."
If you have anyone you can lobby, this seems like a good case.

The sad story of my friend Sam by Gershon Baskin, Jerusalem Post Internet Edition, Sept. 25.

I have been spending hours during the past couple of weeks trying to help a friend. Well, he's not really a friend, we hardly know each other.

I have exchanged e-mails with him several times over the past years, and appeared with him once at a conference at Tel Aviv University. I was impressed by his mild manner and his "go-getter" attitude to life.

In a lot of ways he reminds me of myself. He immigrated to this country out of a deep sense of idealism. He felt that he was coming home. He wanted to serve his people, build a life for himself and his family. Like me, he immigrated from the States. He has been living here for years and has scored some real achievements, including making a name for himself in the business world.

His name is Sam Bahour, and he is Palestinian. He came home to Palestine at the outset of the peace process in order to build the new state and make a contribution to peace. He believed in the peace process and he wanted to build his life with his people.

Sam has built a hi-tech company in Ramallah. He's built a small shopping center there too. He has been a central and active part of Ramallah's social and intellectual life.

Sam is all over, always willing to help out, and always willing to meet Israelis because he believes in peace. He has many Israeli friends all over Israel. He even holds an MBA from Tel Aviv University.

The one place where Sam doesn't have Israeli friends is in the Civil Administration - and that's where he needs them more than ever.

WHEN MOSHE Arens was minister of defense in the early 1990s he formed a committee, headed by Prof. Ezra Sadan, to reevaluate Israel's economic policies in the West Bank and Gaza. The Sadan committee recommended, and minister Arens implemented, a major policy change that actually encouraged investors of Palestinian origin to "return" to the West Bank and Gaza in order to invest and to create jobs.

When the peace process got under way after 1993 that policy was further developed and Palestinian expatriates were called on by both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority to come back to Palestine and build their future while contributing to peace.

That's what Sam did. Only Sam didn't know that Israel would continue to control the population registry, and that he would have to leave the country every three months in order to be able to stay in the country.

But Sam is a law-abiding citizen, and so every three months he left the country in order to get a new three-month tourist visa.

Now everyone knew Sam wasn't a tourist, but everyone has been playing the game of make-believe that he was so he could stay in Ramallah with his wife and children and could continue to manage the successful businesses he has worked so hard to build.

THOUSANDS of people have been playing the same game for years. Sam did apply for family reunification in 1994, before the PA took over. It is also worth pointing out that thousands of Jews live for years in Israel for years on tourist visas without being threatened at all.

At the end of this month, in a few days, Sam will have to leave the country again - but this time he will not be coming back. Someone decided that the charade has to end.

A certain Mr. Gur Lavie, who is in charge of Palestinian population registration for the West Bank, said to me last week: "Let's face it. We all know he's not a tourist."

I said, "That's right, we all know that."

So, said my interlocutor, "let him apply for family reunification."

Brilliant idea! Some 120,000 family reunification files have been opened since 2000, but since the beginning of the intifada in September 2000, the State of Israel has stopped reviewing family reunification files.

The registration officer's response: "That's his problem" - and he is right, it is his problem; but it should be ours too.

NOW IT IS very important to get something straight. Sam Bahour does not want to live in the State of Israel. He lives in Ramallah, and he wishes to continue to live in Ramallah. He too wants to stop playing the charade.

He is not alone. He is one of thousands of Palestinians who have no Palestinian ID issued by the Palestinian Authority, thus, he has no ID approved by the State of Israel. Sam Bahour only has his US passport and that document is no longer useful for getting him permission to live in Ramallah.

The official I spoke to is implementing a policy which is nothing more than a form of ethnic cleansing, but he did not make the decision himself. He is simply a mid-level clerk in a pseudo-government system of control called "the occupation."

One of his bosses made the decision. Since his direct boss is the head of the Civil Administration, it might appear that some brigadier-general made the decision, but Brig.-Gen. Kamil Abu Rukon, the current head of the Civil Administration, did not make the decision. It came from higher up. Abu Rukon answers to Gen. Yosef Mishlev, the coordinator of government activities in the territories, but Gen.

Mishlev also didn't make this decision. It was made by the minister of defense - not Amir Peretz but his predecessor, Shaul Mofaz. It was probably one of the last decisions he made before leaving the ministry. It is possible that Peretz is not even aware of the decision and its impact on tens of thousands of people in the West Bank.

IT IS TIME to end the charade. When I immigrated to Israel they made me a temporary resident. When I was ready I was given citizenship and permanent residency.

Sam Bahour does not yet have a state to become a citizen of, but he certainly should be granted some form of residency that allows him to be the exemplary citizen that he is. We Israelis should be interested in keeping Sam Bahour and the thousands of others like Sam as our neighbors in the West Bank. The chances for building real peace increase when people like Sam Bahour can be our neighbor. Shame on any government of Israel that would force people like Sam to leave.

During the final days leading up to Yom Kippur we should all say sorry to Sam Bahour and correct this injustice to Sam and to thousands of others once and for all. It is the most Jewish thing to do, particularly in the Holy Days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

The writer is the Israeli Co-CEO of IPCRI, the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. www.ipcri.org .

Soros: Israel & US Blinded by a Concept

Ed: If you are wondering about the Middle East views of George Soros, the politically-engaged Jewish refugee billionaire financier, this article, posted at GeorgeSoros.com and originally published in the Boston Globe (Aug. 31) is for you. He is also the author of a book on this general subject. I would have preferred if he had said a little more on how Palestinian factions have contributed to the current mess, but this perspective closely matches my own.

THE FAILURE OF Israel to subdue Hezbollah demonstrates the many weaknesses of the war-on-terror concept. One of those weaknesses is that even if the targets are terrorists, the victims are often innocent civilians, and their suffering reinforces the terrorist cause.

In response to Hezbollah's attacks, Israel was justified in attacking Hezbollah to protect itself against the threat of missiles on its border. However, Israel should have taken greater care to minimize collateral damage. The civilian casualties and material damage inflicted on Lebanon inflamed Muslims and world opinion against Israel and converted Hezbollah from aggressors to heroes of resistance for many. Weakening Lebanon has also made it more difficult to rein in Hezbollah.

Another weakness of the war-on-terror concept is that it relies on military action and rules out political approaches. Israel previously withdrew from Lebanon and then from Gaza unilaterally, rather than negotiating political settlements with the Lebanese government and the Palestinian Authority. The strengthening of Hezbollah and Hamas was a direct consequence of that approach. The war-on-terror concept stands in the way of recognizing this fact because it separates "us" from "them" and denies that our actions help shape their behavior.

A third weakness is that the war-on-terror concept lumps together different political movements that use terrorist tactics. It fails to distinguish among Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, or the Sunni insurrection and the Mahdi militia in Iraq. Yet all these terrorist manifestations, being different, require different responses. Neither Hamas nor Hezbollah can be treated merely as targets in the war on terror because both have deep roots in their societies; yet there are profound differences between them.

Looking back, it is easy to see where Israeli policy went wrong. When Mahmoud Abbas was elected president of the Palestinian Authority, Israel should have gone out of its way to strengthen him and his reformist team. When Israel withdrew from Gaza, the former head of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, negotiated a six-point plan on behalf of the Quartet for the Middle East (Russia, the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations). It included opening crossings between Gaza and the West Bank, allowing an airport and seaport in Gaza, opening the border with Egypt; and transferring the greenhouses abandoned by Israeli settlers into Arab hands. None of the six points was implemented. This contributed to Hamas's electoral victory. The Bush administration, having pushed Israel to allow the Palestinians to hold elections, then backed Israel's refusal to deal with a Hamas government. The effect was to impose further hardship on the Palestinians.

Nevertheless, Abbas was able to forge an agreement with the political arm of Hamas for the formation of a unity government. It was to foil this agreement that the military branch of Hamas, run from Damascus, engaged in the provocation that brought a heavy-handed response from Israel – which in turn incited Hezbollah to further provocation, opening a second front.

That is how extremists play off against each other to destroy any chance of political progress.

Israel has been a participant in this game, and President Bush bought into this flawed policy, uncritically supporting Israel. Events have shown that this policy leads to the escalation of violence. The process has advanced to the point where Israel's unquestioned military superiority is no longer sufficient to overcome the negative consequences of its policy. Israel is now more endangered in its existence than it was at the time of the Oslo Agreement on peace.

Similarly, the United States has become less safe since Bush declared war on terror.

The time has come to realize that the present policies are counterproductive. There will be no end to the vicious circle of escalating violence without a political settlement of the Palestine question. In fact, the prospects for engaging in negotiations are better now than they were a few months ago. The Israelis must realize that a military deterrent is not sufficient on its own. And Arabs, having redeemed themselves on the battlefield, may be more willing to entertain a compromise.

There are strong voices arguing that Israel must never negotiate from a position of weakness. They are wrong. Israel's position is liable to become weaker the longer it persists on its present course. Similarly Hezbollah, having tasted the sense but not the reality of victory (and egged on by Syria and Iran) may prove recalcitrant. But that is where the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas comes into play. The Palestinian people yearn for peace and relief from suffering. The political – as distinct from the military – wing of Hamas must be responsive to their desires. It is not too late for Israel to encourage and deal with an Abbas-led Palestinian unity government as the first step toward a better-balanced approach.

Given how strong the US-Israeli relationship is, it would help Israel to achieve its own legitimate aims if the US government were not blinded by the war-on-terror concept.

Wal-Mart Cheap Rx Plan Will Revolutionize Delivery

The environment for prescription drugs may never be the same when Wal-Mart fully rolls out its low-cost drug program. Wal-Mart has already implemented the program in 65 of its stores aeound Tampa, Florida. It will cut the price on about 150 generic drugs to $4 for a 30-day supply. If expanded, this could improve the entire U.S. healthcare system.

Are grocery pharmacies and brand name pharmacies shaking in the wake of a potential Wal-Mart blitz. The public just wants affordable drugs for their ailments. Canadian provinces might be put out of the U.S. prscription drug market too. The pharmaceutical companies will still make money on relieving disease symptons. Isn't American capitalism great?

Global Warming Political Competition Heats Up

There is a lot of publicity coming from liberal Democrats and a lot of practical programs being implemented by conservative Republicans. Former President Bill Clinton is a Neo-glob and his Vice President is embracing the Ozone Man label. Former Vice President Al Gore has produced a book and a movie. President Clinton has the Global Initiative and Sir Richard Branson has pledged $3 billion for work on alternative energy. Laurie David produced an HBO special and even Spike Lee mentioned global warming in his documentary about New Orleans.

President Bush has the Methane-to-Markets, Asia Pacific Partnership and the Energy Policy Act of 2005 - - three of the most important climate change initiatives ever. Some are talking the talk and some are walking the walk.

Richard Branson has created Virgin Fuels, which will invest $400 million to develop nonpetroleum fuels. Branson has already invested $70 million in Cilion, a new California company that will build ethanol plants. AAEA Note: there is strong evidence that ethanol will increase smog. The Clinton Global Initiative has created The Green Fund, a profit-oriented entity that will focus on reducing dependence on fossil fuels, creating jobs, lessening pollution and helping to reduce global warming.

Nuclear Power & Historically Black Colleges & Universities

There are 103 licensed nuclear power plants operating in the U.S. and there are 103 historically black colleges and universities across the country. Both want renewal. Both face stiff competition from outside sources. Investors should flock to these valuable American resources.

Do You Gas Up at the Hugo Chavez CITGO Gas Stations?

According to the CITGO website, "The company is owned by PDV America, Inc., an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., the national oil company of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela." This socialist dictator-in-waiting came to American soil and called our president the "devil" and called for the overthrow of the U.S. government and Kool Aid drinkers are filling their cars up with his oil. Is that really where you want to put your money? New York Congressman Charles Rangel got it right. Get lost Hugo before we park an aircraft carrier off your coast.

Hugo Chavez Oil, Inc. is also part of the consortium planning to drill for oil off the Florida coast. Has President Bush gotten gun shy because of Iraq. He lets this bully kick sand in his face at the United Nations. He lets him make money off of Americans to finance his future dictatorship. He calls for overthrowning the U.S. government. Hugo promotes socialism and condemns capitalism. His cheap oil is not equity for America's poor and minorities either. Venezuelan oil would be a nice reparation.

Good News (maybe) plus Bad News (probably)

First, the possible good news, as reported by Gershon Baskin in his Sept. 24 weekly column in the Jerusalem Times:

If the report in today’s Yediot Ahronot is correct, about two weeks ago Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with a senior official in the Saudi Royal Court. [A JTA bulletin reported official Israeli and Saudi denials.] Israeli Galai Zahal radio is reporting that Olmert met with King Abdallah, who as Crown Prince, initiated a peace deal, today known as the Arab League Peace initiative that called for full Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories in exchange for full peace with the entire Arab World. This report fits in with the initiative of the Arab League to convene a Security Council discussion on the Arab League Initiative. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni made the rounds at the UN during the annual opening of the UN session meeting foreign ministers from all over the world, including from several Arab countries that Israel has no diplomatic relations with. Israel, unfortunately opposed the Arab League plans to hold the Security Council meeting on the peace initiative, but was not successful. Nonetheless, Livni came over very well as a responsible and reasonable Israeli leader truly searching for peace. She held what was reported to be a very productive meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erikat. They apparently spoke about an upcoming summit meeting between Abbas and Olmert. Olmert also commented that he would be meeting with Abbas soon, without any preconditions, however a date has still not been set.

Ed: There is more to this “however,” however, regarding this contention of no preconditions – not to mention that little complication that Abbas must again negotiate with Prime Minister Haniyah (of Hamas) upon the latter’s apparent rejection of a permanent peace with Israel, as Baskin continues:

The Olmert-Abbas summit does appear to have several preconditions to it taking place. Olmert, it seems will not meet with Abbas until Corporal Gilead Shalit is released from captivity and it appears that Olmert is also expecting Abbas to first complete the internal Palestinian negotiations on the national unity government that would recognize Israel. Abbas has made comments over the weekend stating that the new government must recognize Israel, however Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyah has stated that he will never head a government that recognizes Israel. Abbas is back in Gaza to continue the negotiations with Haniyah. In the meantime, Abbas has stated that Fatah leader in prison Marwan Barghouthi and the leader of the PFLP, also in prison in Israel (both convicted of murder) must be included in any prisoner release for Gilead Shalit. Olmert and other Israeli government ministers, including Shimon Peres, have completely rejected this demand.

Ed: The bad news was reported in the NY Times, Monday, Sept. 25, that the first 5,000 soldiers of the reinforced UNIFIL force mandated by Security Council Resolution 1701 have no clear duties nor adequately coordinated its cooperation with the Lebanese Army to safeguard the cease-fire:

They ... cannot set up checkpoints, search cars, homes or businesses or detain suspects. If they see a truck transporting missiles, for example, they say they cannot stop it. They cannot do any of this, they say, because under their interpretation of the Security Council resolution that deployed them, they must first be authorized to take such action by the Lebanese Army.

The job of the United Nations force, and commanders in the field repeat this like a mantra, is to respect Lebanese sovereignty by supporting the Lebanese Army. They will only do what the Lebanese authorities ask.

But even this is unclear. On NPR this morning, correspondent Linda Gradstein reported that Israel is satisfied with the functioning of UNIFIL! We’re entitled to scratch our heads in puzzlement.

"Mira, Papi! Muchos Gringos!

Ciclovia is Bogota's family day.

The city blocks off 120 km of city streets for the exclusive use of bicycles, walkers, roller skaters, and families.

On this particular Sunday, Ciclovia was joined by international activists from the Toward Carfree Cities VI conference.

As we rode througth the modern city and the riverside bike trails we did not pass unnoticed. A very young girl riding with her father pointed at the unusual foreign horde on bikes and pronounced, "Mira, Papi! Muchos Gringos!"

While certainly true, this must have been an unusual sight for a child growing up in a country that has only recently been declared safe to visit by international travel agents. Though you would never know this by reading the US State Department's travel advisories. In the official US propaganda, Colombia is still a country to be avoided by travellers due to rampant kidnappings in the countryside, and brutal robberies in the cities.

We saw none of this. What we witnessed was a proud country that is reaching out to the world. The Colombian people are some of the most welcoming I have ever met overseas.

One taste of the fresh squeezed jugo de watermelon and banana after 50km of bike riding through Bogota and you know you are in Heaven.

Thank you to Colombia and the wonderful people here who are showing the world how inequality in mobility can be fixed with a firm commitment to transporation justice and for acting on the belief that public spaces, lively plazas for the community to gather, and car-free pedestrian zones are the building blocks that create civilization.

Viva Colombia! You have so much to teach the so-called "First World."

Lurie: ‘Good Fence’ now closed

The following is adapted from the column written on Sept. 17 by our khaver, J. Zel Lurie, for the South Florida Jewish Journal. (Readers are reminded that unless explicitly indicated, weblog postings do not necessarily reflect the view of Meretz USA.)

Thirty years ago, the fence between Lebanon and Israel was dubbed “The Good Fence.” Villagers in South Lebanon had been cut off from medical specialists and hospitals in Beirut by the civil war that was raging. They streamed across “The Good Fence” at Israel’s invitation for treatment by medical specialists from Israel’s finest hospitals. They were also permitted to import and export their goods through Haifa’s port.

I recall visiting the fence outside of Metulla in the dry summer of 1977. We found an open-air clinic in an idyllic setting of apple trees manned by a Hadassah group which had come up from Jerusalem for the day. We were accompanied by Rafi, an Israeli-Druse journalist from one of the Druse villages near Haifa. Speaking Arabic to the crowd of women and children who were awaiting treatment, Rafi learned that most were Christian with a few Muslims among them.

In 1982 tanks rumbled across the good fence as Israel invaded Lebanon. For the next 18 years, Israel occupied southern Lebanon. The gate in the fence continued to serve as the pathway to good medicine and good business.

In 2000, when the Israel Army and its allied South Lebanon Army withdrew into Israel, the good fence became the fence that separated good from evil. The Iranian proxy soldiers of the Hezbollah began their harassing attacks across the border almost immediately. On October 7, 2000, Hezbollah soldiers crossed the border and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers. Two were Jews, Adi Avitan and Benny Avraham, One was a Bedouin tracker, Omar Saud.

Perhaps they were killed rather than kidnapped, No one knows for sure. That’s what evil people do. More than three years later, in January 2004, the bodies were returned to their Israeili families together with one live prisoner, a shadowy Israeli business man who had been captured in Qatar by Hezbollah agents.

Hayim Avraham, Benny’s father said on Israeli TV: “For 1,208 days they kept us in the dark about the fate of our children.” That’s what evil people do. In exchange for three bodies and one live crook Israel released over 400 prisoners, most of them Lebanese,

In a recently published remarkable book, Coming Together, Coming Apart, Daniel Gordis describes what he saw on Israeli TV that night in January 2004. He writes: “Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Saoud came home today. They came home to a country which is not afraid to cry. Israeli television tonight alternated between coverage of Beirut and the air force base at Ben Gurion airport.”

The Beirut segment, he relates, was filled with joyful, back-slapping released prisoners, with fireworks lighting up the sky and then came “the sickening, endless speech by Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah" in which he intimated the possibility of more kidnappings to exchange for prisoners.

And then the TV cut to the air force base where a quiet ceremony took place, at which people cried, Gordis continues:

I thought about the apartheid accusation a few times tonight especially when the coffin of Omar Saoud, a Bedouin, a career soldier who decided that defending the Jewish state was how he wanted to spend his life, was carried from the plane to the jeep. Six soldiers, three on each side of the coffin, arrayed to carry him one step closer to his final home, four who looked Jewish, one who seemed to be a Bedouin, though it was hard to tell, and one, an Ethiopian. All by the side of Omar Saoud, and then, all saluting him. And then the chief of staff and the bearded IDF chief rabbi, standing at the side of his coffin, saluting him and standing at attention. Quite an apartheid state.

And then the two Jewish fathers standing together and reciting Kaddish. And after the Kaddish, an imam, by the side of Omar’s father, chanting an Arabic memorial prayer, as his mother sobbed and the honor guard stood at attention, along with the prime minister, the president, the chief of staff, and others. So much for the apartheid state.

Two months ago, Sheikh Nasrallah made good on his evil promise. Once again his Iranian proxy soldiers crossed the former good fence and ambushed a patrol of soldiers. Two were abducted and the others killed.

Then the Sheikh got the surprise of his life. Instead of the negotiations he expected, the Israel air force immediately attacked and attacked. They destroyed his entire stock of long-range Iranian and Syrian missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv. They leveled an entire section of Beirut where Hezbollah was centered. They destroyed every bridge leading to Syria, but they couldn’t find the katyusha rockets which were scattered in homes and trucks, Almost 4,000 were fired aimlessly into northern Israel killing 43 residents, 25 Jews and 18 Arabs.

The ground troops did not do as well and a commission of inquiry will find out why. But the month-long war ended with the Lebanese army “invading” their own country and finally occupying southern Lebanon, no longer under Hezbollah control. The Lebanese soldiers will be assisted by thousands of troops, chiefly from Italy and France, under UN command.

And the two kidnapped soldiers are still prisoners awaiting a deal to free them in exchange for Lebanese prisoners, including one serving a life sentence for murdering a Jewish family. Ariel Sharon refused to release him in the 2004 exchange.

We hope the soldiers are alive but we can’t be sure. No third party, including the International Red Cross, has been allowed to visit them.

The good fence will now be a normal border fence. It will be crossed mainly by UN soldiers spending their leaves in Tel Aviv.

On the outskirts of Metulla, on a recent trip to Israel, I found a sign “To the Good Fence.” I drove up a wide paved road to a locked gate. We were the only car on the road. An Israeli soldier standing in the shade watched me as I turned around and drove back to Metulla.

Search from any XHTML-capable browsing device!

Posted by Jeff Ragusa, Google Enterprise

We're always excited when a developer, customer, or partner takes such great interest in our products and in our community that they spend the time and effort to contribute their own improvements. I've recently had the pleasure of working with software engineer and web standards aficionado Joe D'Andrea who has made it his personal mission to take our Google Search Appliance into the wonderful world of web standards compliance. He's created a new XSLT stylesheet that displays our search results in a way that conforms to the XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1 specifications. In doing so he's completely separated the markup from the styling in our default stylesheet.

What does this mean to you? Well for starters it means that you could install this single stylesheet into your Google Search Appliance and provide a search experience that automatically adapts to the device its being viewed on! On a computer screen Joe provides the familar look we all love. On printed paper the astute eye notices some added conveniences. What about a mobile phone? Ok, now we're talking. The drastic transformation into a Google Mobile-like interface seems like magic. But thats nothing. Go ahead and try your favorite text-based or speech-based browser! Ah, there's nothing quite like having your search results read to you like poetic verse...

Read more about the many other benefits in Joe's own blog post. He's published the stylesheet, along with lots of screenshots and notes, as a project on Google's open source hosting platform.

If you would like to contribute to our growing list of open source projects related to our Enterprise products, drop us a note and let us know what interesting things you're working on!

Thanks Joe!

EPA Tightens Soot Standards

The U.S. EPA announced the strongest national air quality standards in the country's history. These National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) address fine and coarse particle pollution, also known as particulate matter (PM). PM is a complex mixture of extremely small particles and liquid droplets in the air (i.e. dust, soot and particles too small to see).

The standards address two categories of particle pollution: fine particles and inhalable coarse particles. Fine particles are 2.5 micrometers in diameter and smaller; inhalable coarse particles have diameters between 2.5 and 10 micrometers. Exposure to particle pollution is linked to a variety of significant health problems ranging from aggravated asthma to premature death in people with heart and lung disease. The final action significantly strengthens EPA's previous daily fine particle standard – by nearly 50 percent – from 65 micrograms of particles per cubic meter to 35 micrograms of particles per cubic meterof air. This standard increases protection of the public from short-term exposure to fine particles.

By revising the daily fine particle standard, it will yield additional estimated health benefits valued at between $9 billion to $75 billion a year. These standards will reduce premature deaths, heart attacks and hospital admissions for people with heart and lung disease. EPA is also retaining the current annual standard for long-term exposure to fine particles at 15 micrograms percubic meter. Based on recently updated benefits estimates, meeting this standard will result in benefits ranging from $20 billion to $160 billion a year. EPA is revoking the annual coarse particle standard because the available evidence does not suggest an association between long-term exposure to coarse particles at current ambient levels and health effects. (Source: EPA) (Wash Post article)

For more information about the final standards announced on Sept 21, 2006: http://epa.gov/pm/naaqsrev2006.html

A Rosh Hashana memory

My mother passed away in the early morning of the first day of Rosh Hashana, September 30, 2000. I recall it also as the day following the beginning of the Al-Aksa Intifada, half a world away in Jerusalem. Curiously, my father died virtually to the day that the first Intifada began, December 21, 1987. I've quipped more than once that it's a good thing for the Jews (and I might also add, for the Palestinians) that I have no third parent – e.g., no adoptive parent to supplement my birth parents.

My parents came to this country together with my mother's Tante Elsa, a stately Viennese lady of family lore, in June 1941, virtually to the day that the Germans invaded the Soviet Union and shortly overran their Galician shtetl hometown, Jarownow (the first w is pronounced as a v). Fortunately, rather than being trapped there, they were in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where they stayed from1938 until ‘41, assisting Tante Elsa after she was widowed and forced into exile from Nazi-occupied Austria; they waited there for US immigration visas, while being rejected by all other Western countries.

As the Nazis gathered to conquer Yugoslavia, the US consulate withheld their visas for several weeks, requiring my parents to prove that the countries they'd travel through would give them transit visas – a meaningless delay (inspired on the orders of Under Secretary of State Breckenridge Long), intended to flummox Jews in the hope that they'd be trapped rather than make it to the US. With the help of a travel agent, my father secured letters from several consulates assuring the US that travelers with immigration visas to the US would have no trouble obtaining transit visas.


My parents struggled in a new country, to raise my sister and myself, and to make a living, without the help of their parents. My mother had sisters here, but my father lost his entire family and I never knew my grandparents on either side because of the Shoah. My mother's brothers all made it to Palestine and gave root to three generations, so far, of Israeli sabras.

I've long felt a serious psychological burden as a result of this background, emanating from the greatest crime of the modern era. Given this history, it's been impossible for me to believe in Hashem as a personal god who governs such things, but I have a funny feeling of being sinful in stating this.

My mother spent most of her last decade in decline in Florida, suffering from a worsening dementia. I took her in during her final months, but was not knowledgeable enough to prevent her from dehydrating during a hot spell in May and I saw her through several months at Mt. Sinai and at the Jewish Home and Hospital. Most days, I would see her twice a day, stealing time from work, and grew exhausted. When my sister secured a place for her in a facility near her in northeastern Connecticut, I okayed the transfer. My visits, of course, dwindled to a couple of weekends.

My sister, who is disabled in a wheelchair from MS, visited with her husband every other day. My mother deteriorated quickly and died within about a month of the transfer. I won't say that I'm consumed by guilt over this, but I do feel guilty, and occasionally this feeling hits me in the gut, especially when I recall that she stopped recognizing me.

Being there for her in New York was an exhausting challenge, but her clear sense of appreciation was rich compensation. I cannot but feel that I abandoned her.

I don't know how or if the Jewish tradition sees a death on Rosh Hashana as significant. If I'm not mistaken, there is some mention for such a death occurring on Yom Kippur. But as long as I remember each Rosh Hashana, I will honor my mother's yahrzeit. Le Shana Tova!

"Developing a Culture of Sustainable Mobility"

As activists, politicians, planners, and bicycle huggers from around the world gather for Towards Carfree Cities VI in Bogotá, Colombia we are blessed with an amazing climate for creative thinking and organizing. "Weather to sell real estate by" claims a local Bogotan working as translator for the gathering.

Bogotá is the perfect city to discuss such topics. The city has more than one million vehicles moving about each day. These include cars, buses, bikes, and even thousands of cargo carts pulled by mules and horses.

The city also has one of the most profound income disparities in the world. In one day you will meet a poor father begging for coins to buy milk for his children, and across town, the beautiful set get out of SUVs for dinner at upscale restaurants. Private security guards are ubiquitous, and mixed with the national army who carry M-16s on the street, you know you are not in Kansas anymore.

Transit use in Bogotá is dramatic. More than 75 percent of trips are made on public transit, a system made famous for the TransMilenio - Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system which can fairly be described as "The Spine" of the city. Bogotá has instituted a pedestrian-transit first policy which puts people first, automobiles second. But considering the still congested roads, they have quite a way to go before becoming a car-free city. Air pollution remains a major problem with the deaths of 220 children attributed to bad air just last year. Particulate matter, emitted largely from diesel trucks and coal-burning industries are the culprit in this crime against public health.

In respone to such conditions, three mayors in a row have made sustaiable and economically-just mobility their central focus. Much progress has been made since these projects began in 1995. The city also boasts of a popular car free bicycle ride thoughout the city each Sunday know an "Ciclovia." Bogotá's commitment to public transportation is paying off. The BRT system enjoys exclusive corridors, miles of bike paths have been built, and car usage has levelled off.

It can be done.

More soon...

Why Does Hugo Chavez Sell Oil to the Devil?

Although Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called President Bush a racist and imperialist devil at the United Nations, he still sells us about 14% of the oil we need. Kanye West said President Bush does not care about black people. Harry Belafonte, while in Venezuela with Hugo Chavez, called Presdent Bush, " the greatest terrorist in the history of the world." Hugo should shut his big mouth. Kanye was wrong. And Harry is living safely in Beverly Hills because of President Bush. Are the rich Hugo, Kanye and Harry working to get African American ownership of any energy infrastructure? What about New Orleans Lower 9th Ward restoration? Any projects or programs at all?

Clearly President Bush makes sure that America gets the oil it needs for our economy to operate effectively. Clearly President Bush probably broke the law when he finally went around Louisiana Gov Kathleen Blanco to evacuate black folk from the New Orleans Superdome and Convention Center. And clearly Presdent Bush has been completely successful in preventing the U.S. from being attacked again. He also appointed Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as Secretaries of State. Hell, let's amend the Constitution so we can reelect that racist imperialist devil.

A Civil Dialogue About Israel

I went to Amityville, Long Island with trepidation last week, to speak before a left-peace group called “PeaceSmith” (named for the deceased founder of the group, a woman named Smith). The event was filmed for local public access cable TV.

I'm happy to report that the evening came off well. It was interesting to see that the audience included activists who were strongly pro-Israel (more protective of Israel's honor than I am, in fact), as well as critics.

Hany Khalil, the United For Peace and Justice coordinator for Palestinian matters (not his title, but largely his job) turned out to be a reasonable and civil individual. We had a nice ride back to the city on the LIRR. We don't see the world and Israel in exactly the same ways, but if he were more representative of leftist temperaments on this issue, we'd have much less of a problem.

It helped that I didn’t argue against the proposition that Israel has made mistakes or committed wrongs in the past (e.g., in terms of the refugees) and continues to perpetrate wrongs in the present. But I didn’t leave it there; I challenged anti-Israel positions that excuse or fail to recognize ongoing instances of Arab violence, both at the origins of the conflict when Palestinian fighters came close to destroying the Yishuv, before the state was proclaimed and in more recent times.

I challenged Hany Khalil on the fact that the UFPJ does not take a stand for the two-state solution, choosing to be “agnostic” on one state versus two due to the influence of Al-Awda and other constituency groups who oppose Israel’s existence. Hany admitted that the UFPJ will not take such a position because this would shatter its coalition; this begs the question why it has a coalition on an issue tangential to the Iraq war that called the UFPJ into existence.

I was largely insulated on the Palestinian refugees and other contentious issues because I take the position of the Geneva Initiative, which outlines a feasible comprehensive compromise on these and other pressing matters.

If this seems too much of an indulgence, you don’t have to read further, but the following is the text of my opening remarks:

The never-ending saga of Israel at war with and being warred upon by its neighbors has driven me to distraction. The Al-Aksa Intifada years have mostly ended, but now we have a whole new set of images and variables to contend with.

Like all of you, I've been horrified by the scenes of carnage in Lebanon. I've also been heartsick about the dangers and casualties and hardships suffered by one million or more Israelis in the north. I was just there; almost all of my many Israeli relatives live in the north, under the arc of the missiles and rockets. And one young cousin that I know of fought in Lebanon.

I. But now for some encouraging news: I was gratified to hear that Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, acknowledged that their attack on the Israeli patrol on Israeli soil was a mistake or miscalculation. They didn't realize that Israel would react so dramatically. Israel wasn't just reacting to a pinprick attack that left eight soldiers dead and two captured; it was reacting to the strategic threat of 12 to 13,000 rockets and missiles, and the firm belief that Hezbollah is a proxy for Iran; with Iran in their thinking, this becomes a potential life or death struggle for Israel. This is why so much of the Israeli left endorsed the concept of the war. Israel was reacting to aggression and that Israel was ultimately in a life or death struggle with a fanatical anti-Jewish regime in Iran that is intending to go nuclear and threatens Israel's physical existence.

I don't know if all this is precisely true. I don't know if anyone on earth knows if this scenario is totally true, with the exception of Iran's Pres. Achmadinejad and the clerical rulers of Iran. In fact, I'm suspicious of these apocalyptic scenarios, but I know that Jews cannot ignore the possibility of apocalypse because it's happened to us more than once. It happened to us with the Babylonian conquest and exile around the year 600 BCE, it happened in the wars with the Romans in the first and second centuries CE, it happened in Spain in 1492, it happened during the Crusades, it happened in Poland and the Ukraine in the 17th century and it happened when one-third of all Jews in the world were murdered during WW II.

Nasrallah didn't expect this massive Israeli reaction because Hezbollah has gotten away with such incidents before. Every few months, something happens along the border. A shooting, some rockets, an attempted kidnapping. Israel has mostly ignored these incidents, occasionally responding with a local air attack or some artillery fire. this time, because the gov't. of PM Ehud Olmert is very new, Olmert felt provoked and that he could not ignore the provocation, that he had to prove himself as a security-conscious national leader in a way that Rabin or Sharon never needed to.

We all know something of Sharon's past as a general and a politician who engineered the first Israeli war in Lebanon. Considering the results, this should have ended his career. But he didn't want to get involved in Leb. again during his tenure as PM. Olmert, as with Labor party leader and coalition partner, Amir Peretz, his defense minister, wanted to prove themselves as competent on this primary issue of Israeli national life-- the question of security. Instead, they did the opposite, and have almost undermined their tenure in office.

But Nasrallah's statement helps them. It says that Hezbollah was hurt more than they are admitting. And Hezbollah very carefully shapes the message it provides the press; reporters know that they have to be careful not to elicit their displeasure. They have not provided casualty reports. A colleague of mine has heard from an Israeli source that they lost at least 20% of their fighting force, 600 out of 3,000 men. He says the Israelis know this because they have their names, probably because they have their bodies and found identification. I don't know if this true or merely a rumor, but I think it's likely that Hezbollah was badly hurt.

II. The second thing I find enouraging is that Israel has sought international help in dealing with its security. It traditionally never does this. It is kind of a Zionist prime directive that it has the last word in its own defense, because Jewish history proves that relying on international protection is not a good idea. Obviously, this is a sign that it didn't win a decisive victory. But it's also a sign of political maturity and realism.

And Israel won one of its war aims that the Lebanese army returns to the border area to exercise sovereignty within its own territory. If a strengthened (as they say, "robust") UN presence bolsters the Lebanese to keep armed Hezbollah elements away from the border, this is a good thing. The boasts or exhortations from Olmert and Peretz during the war that the IDF would smash or destroy Hezbollah were stupid bravado; it set these two gentlemen up for ridicule and the aura of failure when this was not as deserving as at first sight.

But Israel needs to see itself as having limitations. And the world needs to see this too, not maliciously in looking for vulnerabilities to exploit, but to understand that Israel is a very small country with a tragic past and with enemies who have too often been uncompromising and murderously vicious.

The notion that Israel is the fourth major military power on the planet is a form of flattery in a way, for a Jewish people who have been defenseless at the point of repeated assaults and persecutions for most of two millennia. But it's not true. By any rational analysis, Israel ranks somewhere closer to #10 or 15 in some objective ranking of military powers in the world. But it is a major military power.

An ongoing tragedy of Israel is that so small a country (with no more than seven million citizens) must remain a major military power in order to survive. It pays a high price to do so, with most Israeli men spending three years of their youth as regular conscripts and then one month of each year until their mid-40s in active reserve units and subject to unlimited emergency call-up.

Both Israel and its critics need to see Israel for what it is – a small country, forced into an unnatural situation of being the region's most potent military power. The Israeli habit of over-relying upon force is a reaction to those long centuries of oppression and humiliation. But it's not just psychological; Israel has clear vulnerabilities due to its very small population and its long narrow borders.

III. the third and last bit of encouraging news I heard is the denounciation of the Palestinian habit of blaming all their troubles on Israel. This was a bombshell of a statement by a prominent Hamas activist or official.

The Palestinians had an opportunity for a new beginning with Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in August of last year. James Wolfensohn, the former head of the World Bank who was appointed as US envoy to help facilitate the process of transition, had secured funding to purchase greenhouses left over from the Israeli settlements that were evacuated for Palestinian benefit. The ongoing violence from Gaza, aimed at Israel, has created a situation where these businesses have gone nowhere. Produce prepared for export has surely gone rotten, within the harsh closure that Israel has imposed upon Gaza in reaction.

Just as Mahmoud Abbas has differentiated himself from his predecessor Yasir Arafat, in declaring the Al-Aksa Intifada to have been a terrible mistake, there needs to be an acknowledgment by more Palestinians that armed resistance, which is mostly implemented as attacks on random Israeli civilians, brings them nothing but increased grief. Israel must accept blame for much, perhaps most, of the misery in Gaza (especially now as the IDF rampages thru it) and for the misery in the West Bank. But what rational expectation do Palestinian fighters have for how Israel would react to rockets launched against the town of Sderot, next door in the Negev, continually, since before withdrawal and ever since. Or what do they expect when Israeli soldiers are attacked inside Israel, with two killed and one taken prisoner, a few weeks before and almost exactly parallel to the event that sparked the Lebanon war?

Now, I don't support Israel's harshest tactics. Although I don't support an embargo on US arms assistance to Israel, I would support an end to the shipment of cluster bombs. I hope never to see their use again. It is justified that Israel seek the return of captive soldiers, in Gaza and in Lebanon. Negotiations are clearly the way to go, but probably some exercise of force was necessary to get us to this point.

The Israeli party that my group is affiliated with, the Meretz/Social-Democratic Israel party, is a member of the Socialist International and has pioneered efforts to bring about a two-state solution, such as critical agreements in the Oslo Accords and the non-official document known as the Geneva Initiative. We see an opportunity for getting out of the impasse in the north by reaching out to Syria, to again try for a peace treaty involving renewed Syrian sovereignty on the Golan Heights.

We also hope dearly for a renewed effort at peace with the Palestinians. With Pres. Abbas apparently given the go-ahead by Hamas PM Hasniyah, to negotiate, we hope for progress. But Hamas does have to change its stripes. Meretz does not believe in pre-conditions, but we know from recent history that a final agreement cannot be reached unless the use of violence as a tactic to improve one's negotiating hand is totally eliminated. Meretz is very encouraged by the renewed Saudi/Arab League initiative for peace and would like to see it explored and acted upon.

OIG Says EPA Not Conducting Environmental Justice Reviews

The EPA Office of Inspector General has issued the results of its survey, which shows that EPA senior management has not sufficiently directed program and regional offices to conduct environment justice reviews in accordance with Executive Order 12898. Consequently, the majority of respondents reported their programs or offices have not performed environmental justice reviews. Though some offices may not be subject to an environmental justice review, the respondents expressed a need for further guidance to conduct reviews, including protocols, a framework, or additional directions. Until these program and regional offices perform environmental justice reviews, the Agency cannot determine whether its programs cause disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects on minority and low-income populations.

The EPA OIG recommended that the Deputy Administrator:

(1) Require the Agency’s program and regional offices to identify which programs, policies, and activities need environmental justice reviews and require these offices to establish a plan to complete the necessary reviews.
(2) Ensure that environmental justice reviews determine whether the programs, policies, and activities may have a disproportionately high and adverse health or environmental impact on minority and low-income populations.
(3) Require each program and regional office to develop, with the assistance of the Office of Environmental Justice, specific environmental justice review guidance, which includes protocols, a framework, or directions for conducting environmental justice reviews.
(4) Designate a responsible office to (a) compile the results of environmental justice reviews, and (b) recommend appropriate actions to review findings and make recommendations to the decisionmaking office’s senior leadership.

The Agency accepted the OIG's recommendations.

Google en fuego?

Posted by Kevin Gough, Enterprise Product Marketing Manager

Well according to Ken Yarmosh, author of the TECHNOSIGHT blog, Google product manager Rajen Sheth was "on fire" during his keynote at today's The New New Internet conference. Rajen spoke about Google's approach to developing web-based enterprise software and our new Google Apps for Your Domain offering. Upon hearing Ken's proclamation, Rajen responded, "I'm fired?" No Rajen, quite the opposite. Read Ken's synopsis of Rajen's talk and view a few video clips from it.

Minister Louis Farrakhan Supports Nuclear Power

Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan supports nuclear power - - at least in Iran. We guess this means he supports the use of the technology in the U.S. too. We hope Minister Farrakhan does not support Iran's quest to develop a nuclear bomb. That is clearly what they want and U.S. intelligence knows Iran is using the commercial power angle as a Trojan Horse for their real aspiration - - development of nuclear bombs to use on Israel or the U.S. Minister Farrakhan should be concerned that such a bomb might be used in Chicago. But we digress.

Although we are sure that Exelon and the rest of the nuclear power industry will not be calling on Minister Farrakhan for his support, it should not hurt to provide some facts about nuclear power in his home state. Illinois ranked 1st among the 31 States with nuclear capacity and 48% of the state's electricity is produced by nuclear power plants. There are 6 operating nuclear power plants in Illinois: Braidwood, Byron, Clinton, Dresden, LaSalle, and Quad Cities. With the sole exception of the single-unit Clinton plant, each of these facilities has two reactors. Exelon is the owner of 5 of those 6 plants. The origin of all of the commercial and military nuclear industries in the world can be traced back to December 2, 1942 at the University of Chicago when a team of scientists under Dr. Enrico Fermi initiated the first controlled nuclear chain reaction. (Source: EIA)

The Strange Politics of Darfur

Along with my khaver, Arieh Lebowitz, and other friends, I attended New York’s rally in Central Park for Darfur, part of an international day of protest. The following thoughts are based upon an e-mail discussion inspired by this event.

Clearly, there should have been more Christian and African-American involvement and there should be more support from the anti-war movement. I met the UFPJ coordinator of Palestinian issues at an event of my own last Friday (more on this tomorrow); he was busy planning their protest Tuesday at the UN, against Pres. Bush. The only visible presence of the UFPJ at the Darfur event was to advertise their rally.

The Darfur cause makes for some strange moments. I can only guess the real meaning of the Harlem-based Muslim cleric who seemed to warn AGAINST action against the Khartoum regime and indicated the evil role of oil interests at the same time that he opposed genocide in Darfur. Actually, there is some cynical role of oil interests in this affair; the Chinese have been blocking an effective UN role because, according to Thomas Friedman's NY Times column of Sept. 27, "the China National Petroleum Corporation owns 40 percent of the Sudan consortium that pumps over 300,000 barrels of oil a day from Sudanese wells."

Still, I guess that the imam was squaring the circle, articulating the kind of excuses the far left uses for their lack of action on Darfur, at the same time that he was raising his voice FOR the Darfuris. All he needed was to mention the sinister "Zionist" presence in the movement (to my relief, he did NOT) to make his troubling and confusing statement complete.

The Jewish presence was substantial – running the gamut from modern Orthodox yeshiva students to Habonim Dror youngsters in their blue shirts with red lace. Our small group holding Jewish Labor Committee placards drew attention and Arieh was interviewed and quoted by a JTA reporter for his article. Arieh also posted on this blog in May with info on the ideological idiocies of opponents of the Save Darfur/anti-genocide movement.

A strength of the Darfur issue is that it is or should be a unifying cause for Jews, Christians and Muslims, whites and blacks, right-wingers and liberals. Theoretically, Bush and McCain are on our side, as are evangelicals.

One of those who opined on e-mail with me proposed:

a ‘national night of bonfires’. We're all aware that the Janjaweed are killing infants and children by burning them alive on bonfires. If this were happening to white European children, the outcries would be deafening. Where is the outrage?

My response was that white European children were burned in huge numbers during the Holocaust, as were other white Europeans slaughtered in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Neither episode stirred effective "outrage" until the killings were mostly done. What does this tell us? "Never again" remains a slogan and not a successful rallying cry for action.

I'm struck by how in the first half of the last century, nations mobilized millions of soldiers to slaughter each other but still cannot bestir themselves to find a relative handful of a few thousands – a few tens of thousands at most – to safeguard innocents. (I wrote on this for the New Jersey Jewish News, “While Europe Slept...” – the editor’s choice of title.) It's probably past time for the UN to have its own fairly small, professional standing army available for such emergency situations.

Support Hillary Clinton Plan to Help Sick WTC Heroes

We support Senator Hillary Clinton's $2 billion plan to assist the estimated 50,000 people that might need treatment for exposure to Ground Zero toxic dust (GZTD). Senator Clinton's plan provides $5,800 annually for each worker from 2007-2011. So far Congress has authorized $227 million with $75 million appropriated to be spent for treatment starting this year.

The funding will flow through the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) to the state, city and to patients. Mount Sinai Medical Center and the New York Fire Department (FDNY) are already operating monitoring and treament programs and hopefully outpatient and inpatient services will be provided without regard to insurance coverage. We salute Senator Clinton's leadership for these vulnerable American heroes. We stand ready to assist her in helping every person hurt by the GZTD.

Al Gore Fooling with us on Global Warming Again?

Al Gore, right, must think the public is dumb and environmentalists are stupid. Does he really think he can do this act for a fourth time and we are going to fall for it? When he was a senator he wrote books and talked a big game. When he ran with first black president Bill Clinton he was proclamed Mr. Environment. Before he ran with Clinton the second time he did this same act. Then when he was afraid of being labeled Ozone Man he ran from global warming like it was the plague. We are tired of your act Mr. Gore. When you run in 2008, which Al Gore is going to show up? And if you get elected will you do nothing as you did for eight years as vice president? Environmentalists had to force you to go to Kyoto. Even Hollywood mega limosine liberal Bill Maher, to his credit, is holding your feet to the fire on this issue.

Now we do like your Carbon Neutral Mortgage Association ("Connie Mae," - - similar to Fannie Mae) to help homeowners retrofit and build efficient homes. We have a similar plan. Did you get this from Fannie Mae? We left copies of our proposal over there. Our Heating Energy Asset Trading (HEAT) Program is similar to Mr. Gore's. We also like his Electranet idea to let homeowners and businesses buy and sell surplus electricity. The Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) did just that but it was repealed. But fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice shame on us. Fool us three or four times and shame shame shame on you, us and the public. Your rejection of nuclear power also shows that you are disingenous on the global warming issue. (Washington Post article)

Sneh and Avital: Laborites with ambition

On Sept. 14, courtesy of Meretz USA’s ally, Ameinu (formerly the Labor Zionist Alliance), I attended a lunch-time meeting with MK Ephraim Sneh, the head of the Labor party faction in the Knesset. He is also a retired IDF general. My impression is that he has good values on social and economic matters, but is too rigid for my taste on security and peace issues. Along with a number of others, he must be regarded as a contender for the party leadership, now that Amir Peretz has been wounded by the Lebanon War.

By the way, he regards the war as a success — not a “smashing one,” yet a victory nevertheless. At the same time, he sees a “second round” as inevitable, because he sees Lebanon as having really been a proxy war with Iran but does not know where and how the next round will be fought – whether in Lebanon or elsewhere.

His priorities for Israel are threefold:
1) To close the “Palestinian file” – to end the conflict with the Palestinians by making a deal with Abbas. At the same time, and in a way that seems contradictory to this end, he favors continuing the boycott of Hamas. But – very much in line with Rabin’s thinking – as Rabin proclaimed in a gathering I attended with visiting foreign Zionists at the Knesset in the summer of 1995 – both envisioned that Israel’s chief security concern was/is the looming danger of Iran.
2) To rebuild the social services network, which Netanyahu’s budgetary policies have destroyed. A man of commanding presence, somewhere in his 60s, who likes to charm American audiences with a sprinkling of Yiddish and Yiddishkeit, he proclaims that “a country without social solidarity is ‘not Jewish’.”
3) He also declares the necessity to be just and fair to Israeli Arabs, noting that all Israeli governments have stiffed this community, with the limited exception of Rabin’s government in the early ‘90s.

He would like to see a deal with Syria, but is cautious in this regard. He would encourage Syria to cut off the flow of munitions and aid to Hezbollah, to seal its border with Iraq (to curtail the infiltration of terrorists there), and to close Hamas and other terrorist offices in Damascus. But I don’t recall what he would offer Syria by way of payment for these steps, since he explicitly says that he would not trade the Golan Heights for these. Still, he would offer the Golan Heights in return for completely normalized relations.

On the evening of the same day, I attended a program sponsored by the New Israel Fund, which featured Labor MK Colette Avital, a former consul general in New York. She is regarded as a candidate to succeed Moshe Katsav as president of the State of Isreal.

Her charm and diplomatic skills were very much in evidence before a large, friendly and dovish audience. She did not criticize Israel’s conduct of the Lebanon War, but she and her fellow panelist (an official of the NIF in Israel) spoke of the war’s impact as analogous to that of Hurricane Katrina, revealing the deplorable social conditions suffered by Israel’s poorest population in the north, people who could not afford hotels or find relatives to stay with further south and did not have private shelters in their homes.

New version of Google Search Appliance!

Posted by Nitin Mangtani, Search Product Manager

As a product manager it’s always fun to work on cool, interesting technology and then release it to customers. Today we shipped an all-new version of the Google Search Appliance with increased document capacity and some great new features. With this new release, the GB-5005 can now search up to 10 million documents while the GB-8008 can search a whopping 30 million. (By the way, if you ask nicely, we can build them even bigger! Just let us know.)

We also added some cool features such as date and number range search. So now you can restrict your search to only those documents authored between say, January 1st and September 19th 2006. Similarly, when you're looking for that special Digital Camera, you can restrict your search to cameras in the $250 to $1000 price range. My wife would perhaps like me to restrict this search to the $250 to $500 range ;-)

Finally something special for our international friends; we now have our administrative interface, product documentation and search interface available in an additional 10 languages, now totaling 16 languages: Chinese (Simplified & Traditional), Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, Spanish, Swedish.

If you are a customer, you can grab the update from our support site. If you aren't yet able to find things inside your enterprise, check out the Google Search Appliance and see if its right for you.

A Review of the Book "Insurmountable Risks"

The book by Brice Smith, "Insurmountable Risks: The Dangers of Using Nuclear Power to Combat Global Climate Change," fails to make its case. The critical fallacy of the book is that it rejects nuclear power as a solution to global warming but replaces it with wind, efficiency, and coal. Mr. Smith is a very intelligent man so he has to know that sequestration is not a practical application for electric utilities to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions. Any reasonable person knows that utilties cannot and will not sequester their way to carbon dioxide elimination. The reduction and transportation equipment nullify this technique. A suitable storage location is another killer.

America has never used less electricity and never will under normal circumstances, so efficiency will not work. We are building more and larger houses and buying more electrical gadgets, not less. Utilities have a fidiciary responsibility to reliably provide the power we need to operate our society. The public has no such responsibility and they wallow in the pleasures of buying and using every kind of electrical gadget they can get their hands on. Have you been to Best Buy and Circuit City lately? Wind is not reliable because it does not blow 24-7, but citizens demand electricity 24-7 and utilities use the most reliable methods to provide it 24-7.

Mr. Brice uses the capital cost of construction and static cost of nuclear produced electricity in comparison to natural gas and coal (MIT & University of Chicago studies) to try to make his case. Unfortunately, he does not use life cycle cost analysis in his comparisons, thus ignoring the great financial returns during the 60-year life of an average nuclear plant. Utilties currently operating these plants are making money 'hand over fist' and Wall Street knows it. The section on costs and cancer deaths from accidents is pure fiction. Why not spend that time showing that the nuclear power industry has an excellent safety record and virtually no deaths have occurred in the U.S. during the entire history of the industry. This safety record buttresses a massive amount of emission-free-produced electricity to power the most developed and dynamic nation on the planet. And of course, there is the obligatory spent fuel section. Spent fuel is an opportunity, not a problem. So is the available U-238 , fission products and the highly enriched uranium and plutonium from warheads. They all can be reprocessed and recycled to make electricity.

Hello! We have to eat your car

We are told this song is a big hit in Iceland.

We can certainly understand why.

It's got a great beat and you can really dance to it.

Brought to the world by Icelandic Calypso crooner Bogomil Font

Blogging from Bogotá, Colombia

Carfree USA will be blogging from the Towards Carfree Cities VI in Bogotá, Colombia this week starting Wedensday. We will post our impressions of the gatherings and share resources as the world's top sustainable urban transportation experts gather to share news and visions for what is becoming an international environmental/lifestyle movement toward sustainablity.

Carfree Life in Canada

"At the last minute, yes, it was scary to sell the car," recalls Devlin, a lawyer who teaches part time at MacEwan and rides her bike to work, mostly along paved trails. "But then the funniest thing happened. We never looked back. We never regretted it.

"We were free."

Edmonton Journal

Israeli-Arab situation in wake of Lebanon

As Prof. Robert O. Freedman indicated (in two postings down) there is an ongoing perception among many Israelis that their countrymen, Arab citizens, are "disloyal" or pose a possible security risk. But there were also some elements of a breakthrough for Arab or Palestinian Israelis toward greater equality and respect. The following is what we recently learned from Mohammad Darawshe.

Our friend from his days at the Givat Haviva Institute, Darawshe has moved on to become director of development for Israel and Europe at the Abraham Fund. A remarkable "change agent" and advocate for equal rights for Palestinian Israelis, he was relatively upbeat in his appearance on September 12, as Meretz USA's guest at Beit Shalom.

Sharing bomb shelters with Jewish Israelis in mixed towns such as Haifa and Acco, and suffering losses where they did not have shelters and sirens (about half of all dead and wounded Israeli civilians were Arab citizens), the country's Arab population attracted an unprecedented amount of sympathetic news media coverage. Darawshe reports that for almost the first time, Arab citizens were presented as individuals with names and faces.

He leveraged this fact to cajole and shame the Jewish Agency and the Israeli government to make unprecedented efforts to include Arab communities in relief services and reconstruction assistance – including the placement of 14,000 Arab children among 40,000 summer camp places funded by the Jewish Agency. Advances are being made for Arab towns to be designated as "frontline" communities for the first time, with the granting of special assistance, equal to that of Jewish localities, associated with that designation

Darawshe indicated that NGOs were working with each other to an unprecedented degree, with partnerships established between the Joint Distribution Committee, the Jewish Agency, the New Israel Fund, Abraham Fund and Givat Haviva. He spoke of "co-existence" organizations becoming more of a "movement" now.

He also spoke of the poltiical dimension, when nine of the twelve Arab Members of Knesset chose not to accept President Assad's invitation to go to Syria (only the three MKs of Bashara's Balad party visited Damascus). Arab community leaders made it clear to them that it would be especially provocative and counter-productive during wartime, for Israeli-Arab political leaders to visit a country allied with Hezbollah. (In his words, the Arab MKs were told to "shut up.")

Mohammad Darawshe's strategy is to use Israel's self-image as a democracy to make it more inclusive and equitable in the treatment of all its citizens. He uses the same formulation as that of the Meretz-Yahad party, that Israel is a Jewish state that must also be the state of all its citizens.

In the Q & A after, he reflected with some bitterness on his efforts in organizing the Arab sector of the population to vote for Ehud Barak in 1999; the Arab voter turnout increased from 63 to 78 percent, with 98 percent of their votes going to Barak. Barak had promised that for the first time there would be an Arab coalition partner in the government, but he immediately reversed himself; and even Meretz, which had insisted that it would not enter into coaltion with Barak without an Arab partner, did not fulfill its pledge. So there is progress, but still a long way for Israeli Arabs to go to achieve full equality.

Xythos OneBox and Webinar

Posted by Jeff Ragusa, Google Enterprise

Xythos Software provides document and file management products for educational institutions, government organizations, and commercial organizations who need secure and easy to use methods to manage and share their information. They just made access to that information even easier for their customers who own a Google Search Appliance by creating a OneBox for Enterprise module.

On October 18th, Xythos will be hosting a web seminar to discuss the module, how it was built, and what it can do for organizations. Our own David Bercovich will join them. You can find out more and sign up for the web seminar on their web site. The OneBox module is available now in our OneBox Gallery.

This accomplishment offers a great example of how any individual or organization can create and publish a useful OneBox module, without even having a Google Search Appliance of their own!

When it is Time I Want a GREEN BURIAL

By Norris McDonald. Green burial, green funeral, green cemetery. Not that it matters at the time, but embalming is a gruesome process. Not to mention an autopsy and the evisceration of your eyes, brain and entrails. Hacked up like a chicken in a processing plant and formaldehyde, ethanol and methanol replacing the six quarts of blood washed down the wastewater drain. Then suited up and made up for public display in a $5,000 casket and service. And cremation isn't necessarily green.

I don't think so. I want a green burial. Wrap me up and put me in the ground as soon as possible after the official death notice has been signed. I guess we need green graveyards too. I wouldn't mind being buried in the woods somewhere but this could get unseemly if many people start doing it. Jewish religious culture has it right. A green funeral would be short, sweet and to the point, with just the closest of relatives and friends avaiable at the time. Six feet deep is fine but less is okay too. I would not mind being worm food for future fish bait. "For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

Israeli Chief Justice Aharon Barak Departs

Another excellent weblog post by Jonathan Edelstein, the Head Heeb, dated Sept. 15, 2006.
>> Arieh

A giant departs
A few months ago, I was asked (among many other things) to name my political heroes. I'm not much of a hero worshiper, but in the end I settled on three: Yitzhak Rabin, Nelson Mandela and Israeli Chief Justice Aharon Barak. At the time, the first of these was a decade in his grave, murdered n the name of ultra-nationalism, and the second had left public life after completing his work. Yesterday, the last of the three stepped down from the bench, with his legacy intact but his work still unfinished.
Aharon Barak is often described as Israel's Earl Warren, and he was that. Under Barak, the Israeli Supreme Court's jurisprudence adopted equality between citizens as a Jewish as well as a democratic value, gave increasing weight to international human rights norms, and issued a series of landmark decisions favoring civil rights for minorities and restricting occupation policies. The Barak Court ruled, along with much else, that the state may not reserve land for Jews only, that the government could not discriminate in granting budget and investment priorities and that the security forces and that foreign workers must be permitted to change employers. During Barak's tenure, the Israeli judiciary came down on the right side of nearly every important civil rights dispute, and on the few occasions when the court was wrong, Barak was almost invariably among the dissenters.
But Barak was more than Israel's Earl Warren. He was also its John Marshall, both in his ability - sometimes to a fault - to command the court, and in his American-inspired conception of judicial review. To be sure, the Israeli Supreme Court has a long tradition of activism, and since the early days of the state, it has shouldered the responsibility of creating a system of fundamental rights in the absence of a single-document constitution. Before Barak, however, the court was hesitant to rule on issues affecting fundamental political questions or the nature of the state. The Barak Court adopted an increasingly broad view of the powers granted to it under the Basic Law: The Judiciary, and extended judicial oversight to political and even security matters. Its ruling that the Israeli security forces are forbidden from using human shields in the West Bank and Gaza, for instance, stands among the very few examples of a national court regulating military tactics on the battlefield.
Barak was, to say the least, not without his critics. On the left, he was castigated for taking years to resolve certain civil rights cases and for not taking a firm stand against the occupation and the settlement enterprise. From the right, his critics accused him of straitjacketing the security forces, interfering excessively in political matters and compromising the Jewish nature of the state with an internationalized post-Zionist conception of human rights. Whether Barak was too activist or not activist enough is in the eye of the beholder, but I believe that most of the criticism of his presidency is substantially misplaced.
Aharon Barak knew, as well as anyone, that a court's power has limits, and that a panel of judges can't singlehandedly solve a political conflict that has resisted half a century of diplomacy. He also recognized that, in the absence of a firm protocol regulating the relationship between the courts and the political branches, the judiciary must be careful in expanding its authority into new areas and respect the authority of the elected government. It was for these reasons that the Barak Court gave the government a chance to resolve social disputes through administrative and legal action before stepping in to rule. It was also this consideration that informed the court's jurisprudence on such matters as the separation wall, in which it chose to render judgments that would actually make a difference rather than issuing grand pronouncements that would only have eroded its moral authority.
At the same time, Barak also realized instinctively that democratic institutions by themselves aren't enough to protect human rights in conflict situations, and that countries in the grip of a conflict are particularly in need of strong oversight by the courts. One of democracy's dirty little secrets is that democratic countries are often little better than authoritarian ones at handling external threats, because the electorate often votes its fears and because time-limited governments think in terms of short-term gains and palliatives rather than permanent solutions. The history of democratic countries in conflict, Israel not least among them, provides all too many examples of excesses driven by nationalism and fear. Preserving human rights and freedoms in these circumstances requires that checks and balances be given precedence over separation of powers, and that the courts not shrink from exercising oversight even where issues have political or security overtones.
I wouldn't recommend many features of the Israeli government as models for other countries. Israel is a functioning state, and there are democracies that have done worse at handling long-term conflicts, but the combined strain of nationalist conflict, corruption and economic adjustment has had a debilitating effect on its politics. Many of the Israeli government's decisions both past and recent - I hardly need to say which ones - have had tragic consequences. The Israeli courts, on the other hand, have with rare exceptions functioned exactly as they should. One has only to compare the Barak Court's jurisprudence with the timidity of the post-September 11 American judiciary to understand what an extraordinary role it has played, and the example it provides for judges in threatened democracies.
Barak's final test will be whether his legacy outlasts him. The work of the Barak Court is necessarily incomplete. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its associated human rights issues are far from settled, and civil rights within Israel proper remain vulnerable to nationalist attack. If anything, the Lebanon war has accentuated the divide between Jew and Arab, rich and poor, center and periphery, and made a strong Supreme Court all the more necessary to protect the rule of law. Dorit Beinisch, who was sworn in yesterday as the court's new president, is a Barak protege and shares his views on human rights and the role of the judiciary, but she may not be able to command the court the way he did or fend off political attacks on its authority.
The mark of a giant, however, is that his work can be carried on by those of lesser stature. Barak leaves a tradition of judicial activism and a decade of accumulated civil rights jurisprudence behind him, and the court countains other judges who have no fear of taking controversial positions or opposing the state. This will not be easy to erode even if a future government is inclined to do so. Because of Barak, the Israeli courts are in a stronger position to protect and advance the rule of law than they would otherwise be. He is one of those who show what Israel can become, and his presence will be felt - and more than that, needed - in the coming years..

World Health Organization Endorses DDT Use

The Geneva, Switzerland-based World Health Organization (WHO) came out in support of indoor use of the pesticide DDT to control mosquitoes. The Sept 15, 2006 decision reversed a 30-year-old policy and allows the use of DDT in regions where malaria is a major health problem. Now the WHO should endorse outdoor use to eradicate malaria-carrying mosquitoes and they will have it totally right. WHO, like AAEA, now believes the benefits of DDT use far outweigh any health or environmental risk it may pose. AAEA has met with EPA on this issue and approached the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation about supporting an outdoor DDT initiative. About 1 million people die each year of malaria, most of them African children under age 5.

Although overused to the point of threatening raptors and other birds by softening eggshells in the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. provides an excellent example for how to use and suspend use of DDT to end the malaria problem. We disagree with the WHO endorsement for once- or twice-yearly spraying of the pesticide on the inside walls of dwellings. Although DDT has few if any adverse effects in human beings, we believe its use outdoors would be most effective in preventing malaria. Some believe that DDT could cause premature birth and developmental delay in children, but the evidence is sketchy and the American population seems to have fared well during its use for decades. Most mosquitoes are outside and humans are very active outside. Although DDT persists for years, its use can be suspended after the malaria carrying mosquitoes are brought under control.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) endorsed greater DDT use this year too. Most of the mainstream environmental community still values the lives of some birds over millions of people, most of them children. Maybe it is because they are mostly African children and not their children.

African Americans & Nuclear Power: Similar Prejudice

The prejudice against nuclear power is similar to the prejudice against blacks. Blacks have worked hard for centuries but are stereotyped as being lazy. Nuclear power provides emission free electricity to one out of every five Americans 24-7 and is considered to be a dysfunctional technology. Just seeing blacks is offensive to some people (note living patterns). Just seeing a cooling tower offends some people (even though the actual reactor is inside a containment dome). Nuclear power performs miraculously (engineers like to say a 95% capacity factor), yet one little slip at Three Mile Island almost 30 years ago is still held against it. Blacks exhibit miraculous patriotism to a country that has been extremely hostile for most of its history. And the violence of the dysfunctional tenth in the black community is associated with all blacks (to a certain degree).

Nuclear power gets virtually no credit for the tremendous service it provides to the nation. Blacks never get credit for helping to make America the most powerful nation on the planet. Nuclear power is portrayed as evil and the industry that runs it as ill-intentioned. Blacks are stereotyped as being violent and undisciplined. Prejudice is based on ignorance. Maybe one day nuclear power and blacks will be understood, accepted and their contributions a seamless part of our socieity.