A Neocon Sounds off

The following is my review of “IS IT GOOD FOR THE JEWS? The Crisis of America’s Israel Lobby” by Stephen Schwartz, Doubleday, 2006. The article was published in the Jan. 25 issue of the New Jersey Jewish News. It confirms Dan Fleshler’s finding in his research that the organized Jewish community was more concerned with the security threat from Iran than that from Iraq — the neoconservative focus. — R. Seliger

Stephen Schwartz has a unique background for providing a perspective on American Jewry and US foreign policy. Although he does not write about it here, he’s the product of a mixed Jewish-Protestant marriage and a convert to Sufi Islam. He’s also a journalist who has worked in the Jewish community, reporting for The Forward since 1992 and serving as its Washington bureau chief in 2000-2001. Furthermore, he is an ex-socialist, influenced by an ex-Trotskyist (Max Shachtman) who helped shape what we now think of as neoconservatism. Schwartz occasionally writes for The Weekly Standard, the bellwether neocon publication.

Although Schwartz is not averse to slapping down a fellow neocon or two, his theme seems to be, at least in part, that the neoconservatives are the Jews’ best defenders. He denies that this is central to the neoconservative agenda, but he distinguishes between the neocons and the “Israel Lobby” that are so often denounced as one and the same.

“Is It Good for the Jews?” begins with an impassioned discussion of Herschel Grynspan, a young German Jewish refugee who killed a Nazi diplomat in Paris, triggering Krystalnacht. Schwartz proceeds to exultantly recount how, in 1939, Jews and non-Jews — unionized “shtarkers” (tough guys), Shachtmanites and “Yipsels” (as Socialist Party youth were known) — violently confronted a pro-Nazi German-American Bund rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden. This is by way of dramatizing his view that Jews need to stand up for themselves and not rely on what he scornfully and repeatedly refers to as the “shtadlan” lobbies — old-style leaders of American Jewry, whom he mostly associates with the German Jews, a community that arrived earlier in the US than the Eastern Europeans — who sought influence more quietly and cautiously than the latter. The shtadlan approach is epitomized to him by the American Jewish Committee.

This book can be read as an analgesic for a Jewish community increasingly besieged by conspiracy theories on the alleged role of pro-Israel Jews and Israel itself in fomenting the US invasion of Iraq. Schwartz is at his best in challenging the pernicious notions of Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt by pointing out that AIPAC and the old-line Jewish national defense organizations, such as ADL and the AJ Committee, were fixated on Iran. This is a major point of difference between the organized Jewish community and the neoconservatives with whom the “Israel Lobby” is conflated. Ironically, Schwartz scorns this very “lobby” for not protesting the anti-Semitic tone of many attacks on Paul Wolfowitz and other necons allied with George W. Bush.

He also distinguishes among key personalities regularly damned in so many quarters as “pro-Likud.” He points out that Wolfowitz, the administration’s highest-ranking neocon in its first term, was known for pro-Muslim and even pro-Palestinian sensitivities. And Wolfowitz was not associated with “A Clean Break,” a document touted by Israel bashers (and debunked by Schwartz) as evidence of a neocon-Israel conspiracy for invading Iraq. Richard Perle, the Darth
Vader of anti-neocon demonology, did not even have a job in the George W. Bush administration and resigned early from his unpaid advisory capacity with the Pentagon.

Yet this book could be hard for a liberal or even a garden-variety Democrat to stomach. One of his common refrains is that the Democratic party is not “good for the Jews,” while the Republicans mostly are. His only real evidence is a recent Gallup Poll that “shows that three-quarters of Republicans, and less than half of Democrats, now sympathize with Israel rather than the Palestinians.” He also lays the failure of Oslo at Clinton’s and therefore the Democrats’ feet, but there’s no substantial analysis to back this contention.

He explicitly excludes the likes of right-wing isolationist Pat Buchanan from the GOP camp that he admires. He is also scathing about the nature of Saudi influence, a focus he shares with most neocons, and this is one reason why he is not positive about the elder Pres. Bush — but he largely exempts the younger Bush from this concern.

Unfortunately for Schwartz, his book was published just at the point that the troubles in Iraq and the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan became dramatically obvious. In some ways, Schwartz is the last neocon, still writing as if “democratizing Iraq” really was the best strategic goal of the moment, ignoring how the battle against Al Qaeda and the Taliban was sidetracked and how Iran’s influence and its looming nuclear threat have been enabled by the invasion of Iraq — which he still defends.

Three articles by T. Desmond Alexander on Genesis and Genealogies

The following related articles are now available in PDF:

T. Desmond Alexander, "From Adam to Judah: The Significance of the Family Tree in Genesis," Evangelical Quarterly 61:1 (1989): 5-19.

T. Desmond Alexander, "Genealogies, Seed and the Compositional Unity of Genesis," Tyndale Bulletin 44.2 (1993): 255-270.

Summary:

Most studies on Genesis tend to focus on the disparate nature of the material which has been used in its composition. It is argued here that the entire book has been carefully composed to focus on a unique family line. The members of this line of ‘seed’ enjoyed a special relationship with God which resulted in the establishment of two eternal covenants, the first with Noah and the second with Abraham. At the heart of this latter covenant was the promise that God’s blessing would be mediated to all the nations of the earth through the ‘seed’ of Abraham. While the book of Genesis draws attention to the initial stages of the fulfilment of this promise, its ultimate fulfilment is linked to a royal dynasty associated with the descendants of Judah.

T. Desmond Alexander, "Further Observations on the Term "Seed" in Genesis," Tyndale Bulletin 48.2 (1997): 363-367.

AAEA Meets with White House Council on Environmental Quality

AAEA President Norris McDonald, second from left, members John McCormick, far left, and John Rosenthal, far right, met with Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Chairman James Connaughton, second from right, to discuss energy and environmental issues. They all agreed that something must be done about the structural conflicts that are pitting and will pit energy delivery and efficiency goals against air quality and global warming goals. These structural disincentives must be reconciled in order for America to meet our energy efficiency, delivery and atmospheric goals. The meeting was productive and also included discussions about environmental justice issues.

CEQ was created by NEPA (1969) and has eight duties and purposes:Assist and Advise the President in preparing an annual environmental quality report, gather, analyze, and interpret information on trends in the quality of the environment, review and appraise federal agency compliance with the environmental policies of NEPA, develop and recommend to the President national policies to foster and promote the improvement of environmental quality, conduct investigations, studies, surveys, research, and analysis relating to ecological systems, document and define changes and trends in the natural environment and their underlying causes, report at least once each year to the President on the condition of the environment, and make recommendations to the President with respect to environmental policies and legislation.

James L. Connaughton was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate on June 14 and appointed by President Bush on June 18, 2001 to serve as the Chairman of the CEQ. Chairman Connaughton serves as the senior environmental advisor to the President as well as Director of the White House Office of Environmental Policy, which oversees the development of environmental policy, coordinates interagency implementation of environmental programs, and mediates key policy disagreements among Federal agencies, state, tribal and local governments and private citizens. In addition to the duties and functions listed above, CEQ also has four specific NEPA responsibilities: Issue regulations and other guidance regarding NEPA, Resolve lead agency disputes, Mediate interagency disputes over environmental policy, Provide training and advice to federal agencies regarding NEPA compliance,

MJ Rosenberg vs. Rosenfeld & AJCommittee

As some folks know, I read a range of items online - and off. While this matter has been discussed earlier in this weblog here and then here, I thought this, by a veteran observer of the American Jewish community, is worth reading now. >> Arieh

American Jewish Committee Report Goes After Liberal Anti-Semites
By M.J. Rosenberg / TPM Cafe / January 30, 2007 / bio

Today's New York Times carries a news item about a report issued by the American Jewish Committee which attacks progressive Jewish critics of Israeli policies as anti-semitic.
"The American Jewish Committee, an ardent defender of Israel, is known for speaking out against anti-Semitism, but this conservative advocacy group has recently stirred up a bitter and emotional debate with a new target: liberal Jews....

"An essay the committee features on its Web site, ajc.org, titled “ ‘Progressive’ Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism,” says a number of Jews, through their speaking and writing, are feeding a rise in virulent anti-Semitism by questioning whether Israel should even exist.

"In an introduction to the essay, David A. Harris, the executive director of the committee, writes, “Perhaps the most surprising — and distressing — feature of this new trend is the very public participation of some Jews in the verbal onslaught against Zionism and the Jewish State.” Those who oppose Israel’s basic right to exist, he continues, “whether Jew or gentile, must be confronted.” ...
... Rosenberg's weblog entry, in toto, can be found here ....

One can see this as part of a multifaceted attack on liberal, progressive and left-wing Jewish critics. More on this ... anon.

Great Man Murdered: Seong Hoon No

Seong Hoon No (September 24, 1974- January 27, 2007)

Update: 1st Suspect Acquitted (The Washington Post)

Update: The criminals have been caught. Thank God. Hopefuly justice will be served. More at Gazette.Net

By Norris McDonald. Seong Hoon No, right, was a great young man and he was murdered at the age of 32 in his family-owned store. He was always behind the counter with his quiet, taller 33 year old brother, Yoel. Although Hoon died from his wounds, Yoel was also shot but is recovering.

He always had good conversation to share. We bantered as I bought my beer. When he wasn't waiting on customers he always had his head in a book or his laptop. We debated politics and he just couldn't believe some of my political positions. He worked with his father, mother and two brothers. They ran a convenience store with a deli in the back and the liquor store. It was quite interesting to hear them bicker in Korean with each other sometimes. They also did not take any mess. Yet, you couldn't meet nicer people anywhere.

Now Hoon is dead. Shot to death by two robbers (animals) two blocks from AAEA. Hoon was murdered on Saturday, January 27, 2007 at 3:30 p.m. at Fort Washington Liquors, located at 10200 Old Fort Raod, Fort Washington, Maryland. The Prince George's County Police Department is offering a cash reward up to $25,000 for the tip that leads to the arrest and indictment of the suspects. I hate the reality of Black-on-Black murder. I hate that my friend Hoon was killed. So smart. Hard worker. Loyal to his family. The spiritual disease of murder has infested our community. This toxic pollution is ruining our environment. Our community has to find a way to end this war. This insane war of the murderous tenth polluting our neighborhoods. More from one of Hoon's friends.

S. Hoon No Memorial Fund
P.O. Box 12221
Arlington, VA 22219
http://www.hoonnofund.org/

I attended the funeral at the Korean Presbyterian Church in Vienna, Virgina. It was the saddest event I have ever attended in my life. Although I hate generalizing, I have to admit that I would not blame the family for hating all black people. Yet they greeted me warmly as they did the many other black people there too. We cried together over this great loss. I did not know they are Christians. That explains a lot. Many people from Prince George's County attended the funeral. A Maryland State Senate Resolution honoring Hoon was read. Hoon's name is also being spelled as Seung Hoon Ro.

Pike Place Public Market (Seattle) Could be Heavenly...

...if it weren't for all the stupid cars.

"What is incomprehensible to me is why we can't entertain a creative solution. Such as designating several car-free hours in midday when tourist flow is at a max."

Belltown Messenger

Why is it American cities ruin their most precious public spaces by allowing cars to invade obvious pedestrian zones?

Pedestrian shopping zones are so special in the USA that people come from miles around to experience them. Just look at 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica.



Sometimes we even pay money to enter a pedestrian zone safe from the threat of cars. Main Street, Disneyland.

Lesson: Car free shopping/pedestrian zones are urban cash registers. Mandatory drive-up parking can sometimes be bad for business.

Alan R. Millard on the Knowledge of Writing in Iron Age Palestine

The following article is now available on-line in PDF:

Alan R. Millard, "The Knowledge of Writing in Iron Age Palestine," Tyndale Bulletin 46.2 (1995): 207-217.

The article is summarised as follows:

The Bible presents writing as a normal activity of daily life, but no Hebrew books survive from Iron Age Palestine to attest that. The written documents found there are few and brief in comparison with those from Egypt and Mesopotamia, yet they attest a varied use of writing which, this paper argues, reached beyond the scribal circles of palace and temple. Considered in the light of inscriptions from neighbouring lands, Hebrew epigraphy presents a richer source, lacking only royal monuments. On the basis of that evidence and analogies from other parts of the ancient Near East, a case is made for the possibility of written literature existing in the land from at least the tenth century B.C. onwards.

Five more Tyndale Bulletin articles to come...

Little Blue Box: Big Business Tech for Everyone

Posted by Ryan Pollock, Product Marketing, Google Enterprise

Just two years ago we made enterprise search technology accessible to small business when we released the Google Mini, and it was only last April that we revamped the Mini with a new design and more powerful features. And yet, we were convinced that we could deliver even more technology and a better experience to our users.

Today we're pleased to announce some Mini innovations that mean large improvements for the Mini's use on your intranet or public website. We've also added features that will let you search the business applications across your enterprise for an affordable price - big business power in the same Mini package.

The most frequent request we heard from our intranet users was the ability to search across various data sources that weren't websites. We previously introduced a feature called OneBox for Enterprise in the Google Search Appliance, and now our engineers have squeezed it into the Mini's small but powerful package. OneBox allows users to search across various systems -- Salesforce.com, Oracle, and Cognos to name just a few -- all from the same search box. Results are delivered in real time.

We also introduced the notion of document-level security into the search results. The Mini can crawl and serve search results for sites protected by HTTP Basic and NTLM v1 and v2 security and can integrate with your LDAP system. This enables both authentication and authorization at serve time, so you can make sure individual users see only the results they have clearance to access.

For those customers who use the Mini on public websites, we integrated with Google's webmaster tools. A new administrative interface makes it simple to add Google Analytics tracking code to your search pages, so you can better understand how visitors search your website. And to help Google.com more accurately index your public website, the Mini auto-generates a Sitemap file that helps us learn which pages are most important to you and how often those pages change.

Existing customers can upgrade their Google Minis through our support website. If you don't already have a Mini, check it out.

Carter’s ‘Palestine’: Review by Gidon Remba

The following is a somewhat abbreviated version of Gidon Remba’s new review, published in the Winter edition of ISRAEL HORIZONS, of Jimmy Carter’s “PALESTINE PEACE NOT APARTHEID.” Pres. Carter has conceded a point (noted by Remba) at Carter's recent visit to Brandeis University, that he mistakenly seemed to be making the Arab obligation to end violence against Israel contingent upon Israel’s unilateral acceptance of demands to withdraw from the occupied territories.

The Webcast from Brandeis also included Alan Dershowitz’s one-hour rebuttal. As reported by JTA, Dershowitz acknowledged that if Carter’s gracious words that day (Jan. 23) were typical of his book, there would not have been much controversy. Dershowitz went on to state that Carter speaks with a different voice to different audiences, that the "Brandeis Carter" is not the same as the "Al-Jezeera Carter." But somebody in the audience was quoted as saying that he thought that Carter's apology was absolutely sincere. (Readers may also be interested in Kenneth Stein’s article in Middle East Quarterly, “My Problem with Jimmy Carter’s Book.”) – Ed.

President Jimmy Carter advocates many of the same constructive policies endorsed by moderates on the Zionist left and center in Israel and the American Jewish community: a negotiated Palestinian-Israeli peace under the rubric of the Road Map and the Geneva Initiative, two states for two peoples, an end to the expansion of settlements and the occupation of the West Bank. Nevertheless, his book is replete with major errors of fact, all systematically biased against Israel. Although Carter himself is no Israel hater, at times he does an uncanny impersonation of one, unfailingly showing deep sympathy for Palestinian perceptions, while displaying little understanding for Israeli attitudes or needs.

Apartheid and Separation Barrier

Before reviewing Carter’s troubling errors, we must give the former president his due. Even with his biases and blunders, Carter unearths a moral truth that many Jews find difficult to face. Carter describes Israel’s 40-year occupation of several million Palestinians in the West Bank as a form of “apartheid.” Despite Carter’s explicit insistence that Israel within the Green Line is a “liberal democracy,” his use of this word has provoked outrage in the American Jewish community.

Yet many Israelis and American Jews recognize Carter’s kernel of truth. It was, after all, Israel’s own Ehud Olmert, while still Sharon’s deputy prime minister, who warned in 2003 that within a few years Jews risked becoming a minority controlling an Arab majority in the land between the Jordan and the sea. If Israel did not soon leave much of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it would be forced to choose between remaining a Jewish state and a democracy. Eventually, Ariel Sharon himself grudgingly endorsed this view.

Carter concedes some of the salient differences between South African apartheid and what he terms Israel’s “abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine’s citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank.” He understands that “apartheid in Palestine is not based on racism but the desire of a minority of Israelis for Palestinian land and the resulting suppression of protests that involve violence.”

But Carter’s analogy breaks down in his claim that Israel is constructing an “encircling barrier,” a “segregation wall,”by which it is imposing on the Palestinians a “forced separation” into “Bantustans.” For Carter, this separation recalls the original meaning of the term apartheid – which literally means “apartness” in Afrikaans – segregation, domination and disenfranchisement.

Carter writes that “the area along the Jordan River ... is now planned as the eastern leg of the [Israeli] encirclement of the Palestinians....” Yet this proposal to build an “eastern fence” was unceremoniously discarded by Israel some years ago, as reported widely in the Israeli and international media. Still, Carter contends that the eastern barrier is an operative plan....

International Law

Carter often cites international law as a basis for a just peace. But on this conflict, he cites international law only when it serves his argument.... Carter lumps together Israel’s attacks on terrorists with acts of terror against Israeli civilians: The killing of noncombatants in Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon by bombs, missile attacks, assassinations, or other acts of violence cannot be condoned. These words fail to distinguish civilians taking part in hostilities — like launch squads in Gaza or Lebanon preparing to fire rockets into Israel, guerrillas who have lost their civilian noncombatant immunity under international law — from Palestinian, Lebanese and Israeli civilians who do not participate in combat and thereby qualify for protection. Article 51(3) of the 1977 Additional Protocol of the Geneva Convention is clear: “Civilians shall enjoy the protection afforded by this section, unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.”

Carter further conflates the unintended deaths of noncombatant civilians, permitted under the laws of war if the combatant is making reasonable efforts not to harm them, with deliberately targeting civilians with the aim of maximizing harm, as Palestinian suicide bombers and rocket squads always intend.

Despite his record as a humanitarian and an advocate of peace, Carter does not call for an unconditional end to Palestinian suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism. Instead he says that It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel.

To be sure, Carter does condemn suicide bombings as morally reprehensible and politically counterproductive for the Palestinians. But he is not prepared to demand a cessation of such heinous acts, which are war crimes, until Israel ends its own violations. Carter's position is at variance with the laws of war, which do not permit one party to commit war crimes on the grounds that the other party is already committing them, or in response to political injustice. Under international humanitarian law, both sides have an independent and unconditional duty to obey the laws of war.

Blames Israel Only

.... Israel's occupation, in Carter eyes, is the primary cause of the conflict, and Palestinian suicide bombings are simply a reaction to Israeli injustice. Indeed, Carter says outright that “Israel’s continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land.”

But Palestinian rejectionism preceded Israel's occupation and is an independent cause of the conflict. Such violent rejectionism will not evaporate when the occupation ends, but it would be easier to combat if the moderates have won the day.

There are also errors of omission in Carter's book, which are invariably biased against Israel. For example, Carter's chronology omits any mention of the firing of more than 600 rockets by Palestinian militants into southern Israel during the months between Israel's Gaza disengagement and the abduction of Gilad Shalit.

Carter says that the Palestinians have accepted the Road Map in its entirety, but the Israeli government announced fourteen caveats and prerequisites, some of which would preclude any final peace talks. I agree with Carter that Israel's objections to the Road Map were intended to prevent its implementation so that Sharon could proceed with his unilateral plans. Still, the Palestinians also had major objections to the Road Map and have completely failed to live up to its most central near-term requirement on their conduct: making a sustained effort to disarm terror groups and enforce a truce.

As the US has stated many times, both sides are obliged to fulfill their commitments under the Road Map regardless of the performance of the other. Israel must dismantle the illegal West Bank settlement outposts regardless of whether the Palestinians have disarmed the terror groups, and the Palestinians cannot use Israel's failure to take serious action against the outposts as an excuse for inaction in fulfilling their security obligations.

Clinton, Hamas, Oslo

Carter claims that Barak gave no clear response to President Clinton's final proposal, but [Barak ] later stated that Israel had twenty pages of reservations. President Arafat rejected the proposal— a position which Carter justifies on the grounds that no Palestinian leader could accept such terms and survive.

Yossi Beilin served in Barak's cabinet at the time. Beilin reports that, On December 28 [2000], at a meeting of the government, the [Clinton] plan was endorsed in principle together with permission to send reservations that had not been presented to the government for endorsement.... From that moment, the Clinton Plan embodied Israel's stance on the Palestinian-Israeli issue. (From “The Path to Geneva: The Quest for a Permanent Agreement 1996-2004,” p. 223.) Ross reports this as well in his memoir, “The Missing Peace” (pp. 754-5), as does Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel's foreign minister at the time (see his “Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy,” p. 272)....

Carter, who should know better from his experience as a mediator, ignores the fact that Clinton never asked Arafat or Barak to accept his plan unconditionally. Arafat was not obliged to accept its terms and risk his survival, as Carter suggests, misappropriating a line Arafat used at Camp David about an earlier proposal. In December 2000, Clinton simply asked both leaders to accept his plan as a basis for further negotiations towards a peace treaty. The Israeli government agreed to continue negotiating within Clinton’s parameters.

Carter claims that the famous Palestinian Prisoners' National Reconciliation Document endorsed a two-state proposal. He says that the prisoners' proposal called for...acceptance of Israel as a neighbor within its legal borders. It endorsed the key UN resolutions regarding legal borders.... But it did not even mention Israel let alone recognize it or endorse UN Resolution 242 or the Arab League peace proposal. Carter ignores Hamas’s repeated denials that its willingness to accept a Palestinian state in all of the West Bank and Gaza, as called for in this document, constituted a readiness for peace with Israel.

Here is the Americans for Peace Now’s analysis of the prisoners' document on this crucial point: ... in the introduction of the revised document—which the paper says must be considered as part of the whole initiative—it is stated that the document is being put forth 'on the basis of no recognition of the legitimacy of occupation.' Given that Hamas has considered all of Israel to be occupied territory, in addition to the West Bank and Gaza, it's unclear that the moderates have achieved any sort of compromise on this matter from Hamas.’ Indeed, one Hamas legislator, Salah al-Bardawil, told Reuters, 'We said we accept a state in 1967 — but we did not say we accept two states.'....”

Another misrepresentation is Carter's belief that Withdrawal to the 1967 border [is] specified in UN Resolution 242 and ...promised in the Camp David Accords and the Olso Agreement and prescribed in the Roadmap of the International Quartet. Again, this is a misreading of key documents. It is widely known that UN Resolution 242 omitted the definite article in its English version, referring to occupied territories so as not to dictate Israel’s complete withdrawal to the 1967 borders in exchange for peace. Moreover, the resolution called for an eventual Israeli withdrawal to secure and recognized borders in exchange for peace, which would be the outcome of negotiations, not simply a restoration of the pre-war status quo ante.

The Oslo Accords actually say nothing about what the final borders will be, and the Road Map's call for a final peace treaty that will end the occupation which began in 1967 does not mean that the withdrawal will be to the 1967 boundaries. In a final peace accord in which the parties define the final borders, they will agree that the occupation which began in 1967 has ended.

These borders will not be identical to the 1967 lines and Carter knows this. He talks of mutually agreeable exchanges of land, perhaps permitting significant numbers of Israeli settlers to remain in their present homes near Jerusalem. He's not wrong on the big picture — the 1967 borders must be the basis for a negotiated land swap — but he fudges important details....

GIDON D. REMBA is co-author of the forthcoming “The Great Rift: Arab-Israeli War and Peace in the New Middle East.” He served as senior foreign press editor and translator in the Israel Prime Minister’s Office during the Egyptian-Israeli peace process from 1977-‘78. He is currently active in the American Zionist peace camp from his home in Chicago. His commentaries are available online at http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/.

Your car makes children sick

Traffic pollution can prevent the lungs of children who live near busy roads from developing properly, making them more likely to suffer respiratory and heart problems later in life, U.S. researchers said on Friday.

They found that children who had lived within 500 yards (500 meters) of a highway from the age of 10, had significantly less lung function by the time they reached 18 than youngsters exposed to less traffic pollution.

"Someone suffering a pollution-related deficit in lung function as a child will probably have less than healthy lungs all of his or her life," said James Gauderman, of the University of Southern California.

Reuters

So Prince Charles Is Green and Likes The Hood

Although it might be well known in England that Prince Chalres is a rabid environmentalist, we did not know he was so passionate about the issue. We don't remember him weighing in on the Kyoto Protocol (U.K. is a signatory). Now he is in the USA to receive an award from former vice president Al Gore, another guy who did nothing on the environment when he was in office. He is doing a lot now. He must be running for president. Has to be. Traditional environmentalists in the USA and UK are being critical of this award and the carbon dioxide producing trip to receive the award. We hope he at least purchased carbon offsets for the trip.

Prince Charles and his wife Camilla also went to the Hood, if Harlem can be considered the Hood. Brownstones there a selling for $1 million and 125th Street is a commercial Mecca. Anyway he was photographed and videotaped playing basketball and visiting students at a local school. These tours always strike us as being similar to visits to the zoo. Nice to visit for an hour or two but wouldn't want to live there. Photo opps with black kids. Looks good in the newspaper and on television.

Mike Huckabee, Global Warming & Nuclear Power

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R) is running for the presidency and is serious about global warming because he supports nuclear power. An enlightened conservative, Huckabee's announcement and press interviews have been very impressive. He has thought through all of the most controversial issues and can articulate a dynamic conservative point of view. We like Mike Huckabee.

Huckabee on enery and nuclear: "we not only need to end our dependence on foreign oil, we need to end our dependence on oil, period. He favors research and development of new sources. However, in the meantime, we need nuclear, hydrogen, ANWR and the Outer Continental Shelf." (NEI Nuclear Notes)

Huckabee plays bass guitar.

ALL CANDIDATES

Be Aware

How do you measure the value of a CM / DM system?

Posted by Engin Yilmaz, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise Europe Team

How do you measure the value of a CM / DM system? Do you measure it by its purchase price? The time it takes to deploy? The cost of maintaining it over time? Or do you tend to measure it more subjectively - do you calculate the benefit to your organisation in terms of its potential efficiency and productivity in time saving and document location?

Whichever way you calculate the value of your systems, your users may have a very different view of the world and ask just one simple question: What Can It Do For Me? And the truth of the matter is, if what is on offer is not as effective, as quick, or as easy as their current behaviours of ringing around to find documents or duplicating work, then users will feel underserved and adoption will undoubtedly suffer. Which of course will have disastrous effects on value, whichever way you calculate it.

This was just the case with the Hampshire Police, here in England, who spent £11m (well over $20m USD) during 2 years in their customization a much needed records management system aimed at making the working lives of county's police more pleasant and productive. But, it missed simply because it was just too difficult to use and too time consuming to learn how to use. So the net result here was that officers just simply chose not to use the system, leaving a large hole in the budget and even larger one in the deployment calendar.

There is a lesson to be learnt from this cautionary tale, and in this case the calculation of value and the route to success would have been: Usability = Adoption = Value.

Invective helps nobody

This morning, we note with sadness the first suicide bombing inside Israel in nearly ten months, murdering three people at a bakery in Eilat. The Palestinian governing party, Hamas, although not implicated in this attack, claimed by Islamic Jihad and a faction of the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades, praised it as legitimate resistance.

The following is a version of my response to an article by SUNY Professor Emeritus Jerome Slater, published in Tikkun as “The Need Not to Know: The American Jewish Community and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” and republished at AlterNet as “The Zionist Dream is Becoming a Nightmare,” posted on January 24. It is a review of Tanya Reinhart’s polemic, The Road Map to Nowhere: Israel/Palestine Since 2003, published by Verso in 2006. That Tikkun and Alternet would publish his tirade without an alternative view reflects badly upon both.

While I do not have a problem with much of Jerome Slater’s indictment of Israel’s shortcomings and failings, I am struck by the strident and one-sided nature of his presentation. Slater’s analysis provides barely a hint that there are two sides that have continually made mistakes and committed wrongdoing in this conflict.

He is sure that Ben-Gurion only accepted the UN partition plan for tactical reasons, with the intention of embarking upon ethnic cleansing when presented the opportunity. There are documented quotes that support this view, but he totally ignores the historical words and deeds of the Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini (an active ally of Hitler during World War II) and other Palestinian leaders of that era, which substantiate their intention to destroy the Palestinian Jewish community. And the initial months of battle were a near thing; 100,000 Jews of Jerusalem were under siege and 3.5 percent of the total Jewish population of Palestine (not just fighters) were killed or wounded.

If the Arab side had either accepted partition or credibly offered equal rights of citizenship in an independent Palestine, open to both Jewish and Arab immigration, there need not have been a conflict. There were substantial elements within the Zionist movement that advocated binationalism instead of an explicitly Jewish state.

Mind you, the Ben-Gurion that Slater “knows” would have subverted partition is the same man who was criticized by Benny Morris for refusing to take back the Old City of Jerusalem and to ethnically cleanse all of the West Bank when the Jews had a decisive military edge at the end of the independence war. He’s also the same man who advised from retirement after the great victory of 1967 that Israel should give up the conquered territories as quickly as possible. And Slater makes his contention about Ben-Gurion while ignoring Yasir Arafat’s similar tactical justifications for signing onto the Oslo Accords, made to a Muslim audience in South Africa, among other places.

The most noxious measures imposed upon the Palestinians, including the depredations of the wall/fence, are reactions to the Intifada-related attacks on Israelis that have taken hundreds of civilian lives. While both sides share blame for the breakdown of the peace talks of 2000-2001, the Palestinian turn toward violence in 2000 (although “enabled” by an overly lethal initial Israeli response) insured that the Israeli peace camp was routed from power. Compounded by the unfortunate election last year of Hamas and the ongoing mindless rocket attacks on southern Israeli towns, a return to an Israeli embrace of negotiations and reconciliation will be politically difficult.

Financing BiblicalStudies.org.uk

One of the highlights of my Sundays recently has been the arrival of the www.apollos.ws newsletter. I have a special interest in this site because it is in many ways similar in its aims and practice to my own and I see it as complimenting rather than competing with my sites. The webmasters of Apollos Bronson Taylor and John Sabatino have always been very honest about their aim to make their site self-supporting and their latest update is no exception to this. In it Bronson and John write that they are seeking support through advertising accredited US seminaries on Apollos.ws (which receives around 30,000 page views per month) at the rate of $1,000 per advert per month and are looking for at least three to take them up on their offer.

Much of what they shared struck a cord with me, as for several months now I have been thinking that the way forward for www.biblicalstudies.org.uk & co. will involve me investing more time in development. At present I am working full-time for a Christian charity and work on the sites is done when my two little boys are in bed. It is unlikely that as things stand with the amount of work awaiting digitisation (e.g. Vox Evangelica, Evangelical Quarterly, etc - see my previous entries) that I will be able to maintain the current rate of output, especially as my wife and I intend to homeschool.

Over the last 5 years I the material on my sites has been available free of charge (and will continue to be so) and I have noted that donations towards the cost of bandwidth and development are welcome. Over these five years I have received 18 donations and have one supporter who makes regular donations each month. Currently visitor numbers are now passing 315,000 per year and "page views" average around 40,000 per month. Advertising with Google and commission from Amazon for books sales pays for the bandwidth, but has not increased significantly with increased site usage. Despite the large number of visitors the current level of funding is low.

This leads me to think that the kind of sponsorship being sought by www.apollos.ws may also be a way forward for Theology on the Web (as I have named my group of sites). If sufficient funds were to be generated I would initally want to move towards working part-time and then towards full-time on the sites.

Well that's my vision for the sites. Time will tell whether it is going to be achievable. Any suggestions and/or feedback would be most welcome. Please pray with me that the Lord would raise up a group of supporters who will share my vision and becomes partners with me.

Tyndale Bulletin to be put on-line this year

In November 2005 Mark Goodacre noted in his blog that he never consulted Tyndale Bulletin "because of its weak on-line presence". I have heard that this is about to change and that later this year the complete run of Tyndale Bulletin will be available on-line to subscribers (with new editions appearing after one year). When it appears I will of course be linking to this articles from my sites, but in the mean-time I have been given permission to host 10 articles from the journal. The first four are now available, 3 on www.biblicalstudies.org.uk and one on www.earlychurch.org.uk (see my other blog for details).

Edwin M. Yamauchi, "Magic in the biblical world," Tyndale Bulletin 34 (1983): 169-200.

John F. Maile, "The Ascension in Luke-Acts," Tyndale Bulletin 37 (1986): 29-59.

Thomas Renz, "Proclaiming the future: history and theology in prophecies against Tyre," Tyndale Bulletin 51.1 (2000): 17-58.

The remaining articles will appear as I receive permission from the authors.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Logo

The United States Environmental Protection Agency logo is an interesting piece of artwork. Most people do not really pay close attention to it, but it merits scrutiny. It is a very good logo. The symbolism is subtle yet bold. The colors are symbolic of the items EPA works to protect for the sake of human health and prosperity.

Note the stem and leaf branches are green. The circle blossom is highly symbolic. Note the green at the bottom of the circle that represents the land, left. In a complementary logo, right, it is blue to represent the waters of wetlands, lakes, streams, creeks, rivers and oceans. There is green grassland above the water, thus showing the water below as groundwater. The circle blossom has a horizon through it middle that shows the Sun and Moon rising and setting. The sky is blue. A complementary concentric circle is created by the writing of the name of the agency around the flower. It represents the Earth.

The entire logo hangs suspended without an artificial border. Of course, some logos do have ring and square borders. So does the elimination of the earthly border mean that one day EPA would like to protect outer space? The Moon and planets? Beyond? Hmmmmmm. The blue green motif makes for a soothing represenation of environmental protection. Blue and green are the colors of choice to represent the environment. The stem and leaf branches could also easily be an insect, a dragonfly or butterfly. Very good job EPA.

Ford Heads DLC & Steele Heads GOPAC

Former Tennessee congressman Harold Ford, Jr., left, is now Chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), one of the leading Democratic think tanks in the country. In a recent email to his friends and supporters, he writes: "It is my hope to offer an agenda of national purpose that works toward reviving the American Dream, providing affordable health care to all those who seek it, energy independence over the next decade, balancing our budget and tackling entitlement reform and bringing peace and stability to Iraq and the Middle East."

Former Maryland lieutenant governor Michael S. Steele, right, is the new Chairman of GOPAC, a national education and training center for Republican candidates and activists. Steele succeeds former Oklahoma congressman J.C. Watts, Jr. He will launch a public affairs firm, Legacy Strategies and he intends to write a book. The Ehrlich/Steele administration passed good legislation to protect the Chesapeake Bay and a good clean air bill.

Joe Biden & Chris Dodd Fight Confederate Flag

We really like Senator Joe Biden at AAEA. Our respect for the senator grows daily. He is the top foreign policy expert in the U.S. Senate and he gets the African American community. His recent demand for South Carolina to take the Confederate (Nazi Racist) Flag off of the state capitol grounds is admirable. We are here for you Senator Biden. If we can be of assistance to you, please feel free to utilize us. You have a very good friend in AAEA. Thank you for your understanding of this important issue. Thank you for supporting removal of this vile symbol of pure racism. That flag is a toxin that pollutes the South Carolina Capitol. (Wash Post on announcement controversy)

Ralph P. Martin on the New Testament Hymns

Thanks to a donation from a supporter I have been able to purchase non-exclusive worldwide rights to the following article, which is now available in PDF:

Ralph P. Martin, "Some Reflections on New Testament Hymns," Harold H. Rowdon, ed., Christ the Lord. Studies in Christology Presented to Donald Guthrie. Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1982. Hbk. ISBN: 0851117449. pp.37-49.

I now have a number or Professor Martin's works on this subject on-line:

Ralph P. Martin, "Aspects of Worship in the New Testament Church," Vox Evangelica 2 (1963): 6-32.

Ralph P.Martin, An Early Christian Confession. Philippians II. 5-11 in Recent Interpretation. London: The Tyndale Press, 1960. pp.69.

Ralph Martin's latest book on Hymns is Carmen Christi


Further articles from Christ the Lord will be placed on-line as funds permit.

Not (yet) ‘apartheid’

I wish that Linda Grant had changed one reference here: “There is no question that the Zionist insistence on a Jewish state puts the Arab minority in a position of second class citizens....”

Ms. Grant overstates her point. It isn’t “Zionism” as such that’s the problem. The ongoing efforts of the Meretz party and other progressive Zionists to promote equality for non-Jewish Israelis within the “Jewish state” belie this statement.

“Racism and Apartheid” by Linda Grant (Originally published in the London Jewish Chronicle, but taken here from the “False Dichotomies” Weblog posting of Jan. 23.)

.... We had booked rooms at Le Meridien, a new five star hotel on the beach [in Eilat]. We walked into the usual cacophony of noise you find in the lobby of any Israeli hotel: children ran up and down, large family parties sat drinking coffee, taking up every sofa and chair, vying to attract the attention of the harassed waitresses. It was a normal scene for Eilat, and at least half the guests were Arab-Israelis.

We went for a walk that evening. Thousands of strolling Arab-Israeli families – Muslim, secular and Christian – were strolling along the beach front, thronging the malls, buying clothes at the best stores, eating at the best restaurants, unremarked on. Around 70 per cent of visitors were Arab-Israeli because it was the religious festival of Eid. I saw a woman in hijab having her tarot cards read by a blonde-haired Russian. I saw teenage girls trying on jeans. I saw kids in the hotel pool, a cluster of splashing dark heads and brown bodies, unable to distinguish between Jew and Arab, tourist and Israeli citizen.

While I was in Eilat I read an interview in Haaretz with an Arab-Israeli political activist rejecting the charge levelled by the rest of the Arab world that her fellow Arab Israelis had become ‘Israelized’ - seduced and corrupted by Western liberal values. Later that afternoon, at the airport, I bought a copy of the Jerusalem Report whose cover story was a discussion of what it described as a controversial document issued by Arab Israeli intellectuals calling for a binational system and Arab autonomy. The conference, held on 25 December at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, discussed the huge gap that had opened up between Jewish and Arab education ‘both in terms of resources and results as a consequence of decades of inadequate funding and discrimination,’ according the article.

There is no question that the Zionist insistence on a Jewish state puts the Arab minority in a position of second class citizens, underscored by the inferior school system, roads and town planning. No Israeli government has ever invited an Arab party to join its coalition. And this week, in an ominous signal of what might be to come, rabbinical leaders in Bnei Brak issued a statement saying that it was forbidden to rent apartments to Arabs. This is naked racism.

The Jerusalem Report’s long report on the Van Leer conference raises various possibilities for the future of Arabs in Israel, the nature of the state they live in and how it will have to change to become truly equal and democratic. This is, for me, the most important debate that confronts the country today. Many, maybe most Israelis would like to blink, open their eyes and find the Palestinians had gone away. Israel can build fences and walls and define its borders. But a millions Arab Israelis live inside Israel itself. Despite the wet dreams of MK Lieberman or the wilder fantasies of expulsion (whose proponents think they can co-opt the army into loading the cattle trucks) there is a non-Jewish population inside Israel which deserves the full equality that we in Britain, as a minority, demand for ourselves.

As a writer I take objection to the violation of language. You may wish to call the ceramic object from which I just now sipped a mouthful of coffee a ledge or a camera or a paving stone or a tree, you have that right, but words have common meanings. When one set of people are restricted to separate buses, benches, are forbidden from the act of miscegenation, you call it apartheid. When a people are drinking coffee in the lobby of five star hotels and their kids are swimming in the same pool as the kids of the majority, you’re going to have to call it something else. Right now Arab-Israelis may be second-class citizens but they do not live in an apartheid state. Unless the orthodox rabbis of Benei Brak have their way and Israel turns into a racist theocracy and the hotels are declared Arabrein zones.

See also Bradley Burston’s Haaretz column, “Occupation Is Horrid, But It’s Not Apartheid.”

Black Owned Hotels In Nation's Richest Black County

Integrated Capital, LLC is an African American real estate group and is the lead owner of the 162-room Residence Inn currently being built at National Harbor in Prince George's County, Maryland. The Residence Hotel is 100 percent minority-owned and is scheduled to open in March 2008. The construction and ownership package is part of Marriott's Diversity Ownership Initiative (DOI). DOI is designed to educate and provide assistance to minorities with significant business experience and an interest in hotel ownership.

In 2005, Marriott made a pledge to have 500 minority- and woman-owned hotels by 2010. To date, Marriott has 30 minority- and woman-owned hotels open or under development in the Washington-Baltimore area. The Residence Inn at National Harbor, above left, will make the eigth minority-owned Marriott in the State of Maryland. The Residence Inn will make the fourth minority-owned Marriott hotel open or under development in Prince George’s County. National Harbor is a $2 billion, 300-acre project that is anchored by the 2,000-luxury hotel room Gaylord National Hotel Resort and Convention Center, It will include residential, hotel, convention, retail, dining, entertainment and office space.

Vox Evangelica Volume 4 (1965) now on-line

The following articles are now available in PDF:

Arthur E. Cundall, "Sancturies (Central and Local) in Pre-exilic Israel, with particular reference to the Book of Deuteronomy," Vox Evangelica 4 (1965): 4-27.

J. Clement Connell, "The Propitiatory Element in the Atonement," Vox Evangelica 4 (1965): 28-42.

Donald Guthrie, "Some Recent Books on the Gospels," Vox Evangelica 4 (1965): 43-54.

Owen J. Thomas, "Irrisistible Grace," Vox Evangelica 4 (1965): 55-64.

Yucca Mountain Must Be Opened Sooner

The Achilles heel of nuclear power is nuclear waste because opponents say there isn't a solution for it. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, spent fuel from commercial nuclear power plants can be reprocessed and reused. Global warming and smog are prevented using nuclear power and these are the most important environmental issues facing us today.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Department of Energy says it cannot open the national repository for nuclear waste, Yucca Mountain in Nevada, until 2017. This is unacceptable. There is no good reason to take this long to get a permit to open the repository. We understand that litigation, objections from NIMBY Nevadans and funding funny business are impediments. There is also the matter of this being the home state of the new Senate majority leader. However, the stakes for the planet are simply too high for America to move slowly on this project. We must assure an adequate and dependable allocation of funding from the Nuclear Waste Fund to accelerate permitting and operation of the site.

We believe nuclear waste should be placed in an agency that has the sole function of managing nuclear waste. We are promoting the establishment of a Nuclear Waste Mangement Agency (NWMA) to centralize and accelerate the opening and operation of Yucca Mountain. We believe the facility could be operating no later than 2012. The NWMA would also manage reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. America should reprocess spent nuclear fuel at Yucca and other locations. The NWMA would give this important and challenging operation the singular attention needed to properly develop recycling and disposal of nuclear waste. Picture: AAEA President Norris McDonald at Yucca Mountain at five-mile tunnel exit.

Apartheid Analogy: Pro and Con

Uri Avnery is a radical non-Zionist Israeli who overlaps with the Zionist left in his advocacy of a two-state solution. I found parts of this essay too noxious to copy on our blog (click on the link below for his entire piece), but he has instructive – albeit painful – things to say about what is and isn’t “apartheid” in the West Bank.

A Freedom Ride by Uri Avnery

Yesterday, a decree of the Officer Commanding the Central Sector, General Yair Naveh, was about to come into force. It forbade Israeli drivers from giving a ride to Palestinian passengers in the occupied territories. The knitted-Kippah-wearing general, a friend of the settlers, justified this as a vital security necessity. In the past, inhabitants of the West Bank have sometimes reached Israeli territory in Israeli cars.

Israeli peace activists decided that this nauseating order must be protested. Several organizations planned a protest action for the very day it was due to come into force. They organized a "Freedom Ride" of Israeli car-owners who were to enter the West Bank (a criminal offence in itself) and give a ride to local Palestinians, who had volunteered for the action.... At the last moment, the general "froze" the order. The demonstration was called off.

THE ORDER that was suspended (but not officially rescinded) emitted a strong odor of apartheid. It joins a large number of acts of the occupation authorities that are reminiscent of the racist regime of South Africa, such as the systematic building of roads in the West Bank for Israelis only and on which Palestinians are forbidden to travel. Or the "temporary" law that forbids Palestinians in the occupied territories, who have married Israeli citizens, to live with their spouses in Israel. And, most importantly, the Wall, which is officially called "the separation obstacle". In Afrikaans, "apartheid" means separation....

Because of this, we are right when we use the term "apartheid" in our daily struggle against the occupation. We speak about the "apartheid wall" and "apartheid methods". The order of General Naveh has practically given official sanction to the use of this term. Even institutions that are far from the radical peace camp did relate it to the Apartheid system.

Therefore, the title of former President Jimmy Carter's new book is fully justified - "Palestine - Peace not Apartheid"....

BUT WHEN we use the term "Apartheid" to describe the situation, we have to be aware of the fact that the similarity between the Israeli occupation and the White regime in South Africa concerns only the methods, not the substance. This must be made quite clear, so as to prevent grave errors in the analysis of the situation and the conclusions drawn from it....

These reservations all apply to comparisons between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the historical conflict between the Whites and the Blacks in South Africa. Suffice it to point out several basic differences:

(a) In SA there was a conflict between Blacks and Whites, but both agreed that the state of South Africa must remain intact- the question was only who would rule it. Almost nobody proposed to partition the country between the Blacks and the Whites.

Our conflict is between two different nations with different national identities, each of which places the highest value on a national state of its own.

(b) In SA, the idea of "separateness" was an instrument of the White minority for the oppression of the Black majority, and the Black population rejected it unanimously. Here, the huge majority of the Palestinians want to be separated from Israel in order to establish a state of their own. The huge majority of Israelis, too, want to be separated from the Palestinians. Separation is the aspiration of the majority on both sides, and the real question is where the border between them should run. On the Israeli side, only the settlers and their allies demand to keep the whole historical area of the country united and object to separation, in order to rob the Palestinians of their land and enlarge the settlements. On the Palestinian side, the Islamic fundamentalists also believe that the whole country is a "waqf" (religious trust) and belongs to Allah, and therefore must not be partitioned.

(c) In SA, a White minority (about 10 percent) ruled over a huge majority of Blacks (78 percent), people of mixed race (7 percent) and Asians (3 percent). Here, between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, there are now 5.5 million Jewish-Israelis and an equal number of Palestinian-Arabs (including the 1.4 million Palestinians who are citizens of Israel).

(d) The SA economy was based on Black labor and could not possibly have existed without it. Here, the Israeli government has succeeded in excluding the non-Israeli Palestinians almost completely from the Israeli labor market and replacing them with foreign workers.


IT IS important to point out these fundamental differences in order to prevent grave mistakes in the strategy of the struggle for ending the occupation....

SOME PEOPLE in Israel and around the world follow the Apartheid analogy to its logical conclusion: the solution here will be the same as the one in South Africa. There, the Whites surrendered and the Black majority assumed power. The country remained united. Thanks to wise leaders, headed by Nelson Mandela and Frederick Willem de Klerk, this happened without bloodshed.

In Israel, that is a beautiful dream for the end of days. Because of the people involved and their anxieties, it would inevitably turn into a nightmare. In this country there are two peoples with a very strong national consciousness. After 125 years of conflict, there is not the slightest chance that they would live together in one state, share the same government, serve in the same army and pay the same taxes. Economically, technologically and educationally, the gap between the two populations is immense. In such a situation, power relations similar to those in Apartheid South Africa would indeed arise....

IT MAY be hoped that this situation will change in 50 years. I have no doubt that in the end, a federation between the two states, perhaps including Jordan too, will come about. Yasser Arafat spoke with me about this several times. But neither the Palestinians not the Israelis can afford 50 more years of bloodshed, occupation and creeping ethnic cleansing.

The end of the occupation will come in the framework of peace between the two peoples, who will live in two free neighboring states - Israel and Palestine - with the border between them based on the Green Line. I hope that this will be an open border....

Bike Boulevards in Berkeley, CA

What occupation looks like, Part 2

The following is by the well-known Israeli correspondent who has made her home in the West Bank, as part of her commitment to her job:

Impossible travel By Amira Hass, Haaretz

All the promises to relax restrictions in the West Bank have obscured the true picture. A few roadblocks have been removed, but the following prohibitions have remained in place. (This information was gathered by Haaretz, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and Machsom Watch [an Israeli women's human rights monitoring organization].)

Standing prohibitions:
* Palestinians from the Gaza Strip are forbidden to stay in the West Bank.
* Palestinians are forbidden to enter East Jerusalem.
* West Bank Palestinians are forbidden to enter the Gaza Strip through the Erez crossing.
* Palestinians are forbidden to enter the Jordan Valley.
* Palestinians are forbidden to enter villages, lands, towns and neighborhoods along the "seam line" between the separation fence and the Green Line (some 10 percent of the West Bank).
* Palestinians who are not residents of the villages Beit Furik and Beit Dajan in the Nablus area, and Ramadin, south of Hebron, are forbidden entry.
* Palestinians are forbidden to enter the settlements' area (even if their lands are inside the settlements' built area).
* Palestinians are forbidden to enter Nablus in a vehicle.
* Palestinian residents of Jerusalem are forbidden to enter area A (Palestinian towns in the West Bank).
* Gaza Strip residents are forbidden to enter the West Bank via the Allenby crossing.
* Palestinians are forbidden to travel abroad via Ben-Gurion Airport.
* Children under age 16 are forbidden to leave Nabus without an original birth certificate and parental escort.
* Palestinians with permits to enter Israel are forbidden to enter through the crossings used by Israelis and tourists.
* Gaza residents are forbidden to establish residency in the West Bank.
* West Bank residents are forbidden to establish residency in the Jordan valley, seam line communities or the villages of Beit Furik and Beit Dajan.
* Palestinians are forbidden to transfer merchandise and cargo through internal West Bank checkpoints.
__________________________

Periodic prohibitions:
* Residents of certain parts of the West Bank are forbidden to travel to the rest of the West Bank.
* People of a certain age group - mainly men from the age of 16 to 30, 35 or 40 - are forbidden to leave the areas where they reside (usually Nablus and other cities in the northern West Bank).
* Private cars may not pass the Swahara-Abu Dis checkpoint (which separates the northern and southern West Bank). This was canceled for the first time two weeks ago under the easing of restrictions.
__________________________

Travel permits required:
* A magnetic card (intended for entrance to Israel, but eases the passage through checkpoints within the West Bank).
* A work permit for Israel (the employer must come to the civil administration offices and apply for one).
* A permit for medical treatment in Israel and Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem (The applicant must produce an invitation from the hospital, his complete medical background and proof that the treatment he is seeking cannot be provided in the occupied territories).
* A travel permit to pass through Jordan valley checkpoints.
* A merchant's permit to transfer goods.
* A permit to farm along the seam line requires a form from the land registry office, a title deed, and proof of first-degree relations to the registered property owner.
* Entry permit for the seam line (for relatives, medical teams, construction workers, etc. Those with permits must enter and leave via the same crossing even if it is far away or closing early).
* Permits to pass from Gaza, through Israel to the West Bank.
* A birth certificate for children under 16.
* A long-standing resident identity card for those who live in seam-line enclaves.
_________________________

Checkpoints and barriers:
* There were 75 manned checkpoints in the West Bank as of January 9, 2007.
* There are on average 150 mobile checkpoints a week (as of September 2006).
* There are 446 obstacles placed between roads and villages, including concrete cubes, earth ramparts, 88 iron gates and 74 kilometers of fences along main roads.
* There are 83 iron gates along the separation fence, dividing lands from their owners. Only 25 of the gates open occasionally.

Car Free in America

In his commentary this month, E Magazine's Jim Motovalli takes a look at the state of transit and commuting options in the USA vs. other places on the planet.

Many of us have seen old photographs of the comprehensive trolley and railroad lines that used to serve even the smallest American community, and wondered whether we’ve really made “progress” since then. Though the commuter of 1912 lacked an interstate highway system, he or she could walk out the front door, hop a trolley, then connect to an efficient national rail network with 300,000 miles of track.
E Magazine

President Bush State of the Union: ENERGY

AAEA President Norris McDonald attended a briefing this morning at the White House where administration officials outlined many of the policy initiatives President Bush will talk about during his State of the Union speech tonight. The theme of the energy portion of the speech is: Twenty In Ten: Strengthening America's Energy Security. President Bush will challenge America to reach his Twenty In Ten Goal by:

1) Increasing The Supply Of Renewable And Alternative Fuels By Setting A Mandatory Fuels Standard To Require 35 Billion Gallons Of Renewable And Alternative Fuels In 2017 – Nearly Five Times The 2012 Target Now In Law. In 2017, this will displace 15 percent of projected annual gasoline use.

2) Reforming And Modernizing Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards For Cars And Extending The Current Light Truck Rule. In 2017, this will reduce projected annual gasoline use by up to 8.5 billion gallons, a further 5 percent reduction that, in combination with increasing the supply of renewable and alternative fuels, will bring the total reduction in projected annual gasoline use to 20 percent.

Additional highlights include: Help Confront Climate Change By Stopping The Projected Growth Of Carbon Dioxide Emissions From Cars, Light Trucks, And SUVs Within 10 Years, Stepping Up Domestic Oil Production, Doubling The Current Capacity Of The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) To 1.5 Billion Barrels By 2027, Facilitating The Growth Of Renewable And Alternative Fuel Sources By Increasing The Size And Expanding The Scope Of The Current Renewable Fuel Standard, Reducing Gasoline Consumption Through Increasing Vehicle Efficiency, Energy Policy Act Implementation, Advanced Energy Initiative, Stopping The Projected Growth Of Carbon Dioxide Emissions From Cars, Light Trucks, And SUVs Within 10 Years.

What occupation looks like

It's the little things that make an occupation, The Economist news magazine.

DURING 2006, according to B'tselem, an Israeli human-rights group, Israeli forces killed 660 Palestinians, almost half of them innocent bystanders, among them 141 children. In the same period, Palestinians killed 17 Israeli civilians and six soldiers. It is such figures, as well as events like shellings, house demolitions, arrest raids and land expropriations, that make the headlines in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What rarely get into the media but make up the staple of Palestinian daily conversation are the countless little restrictions that slow down most people's lives, strangle the economy and provide constant fuel for extremists.

Arbitrariness is one of the most crippling features of these rules. No one can predict how a trip will go. Many of the main West Bank roads, for the sake of the security of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, are off-limits to Palestinian vehicles—only one road connecting the north and south West Bank, for instance, is open to them—and these restrictions change frequently. So do the rules on who can pass the checkpoints that in effect divide the West Bank into a number of semi-connected regions (see map).

A new order due to come into force this week would have banned most West Bankers from riding in cars with Israeli licence plates, and thus from getting lifts from friends and relatives among the 1.6m Palestinians who live as citizens in Israel, as well as from aid workers, journalists and other foreigners. The army decided to suspend the order after protests from human-rights groups that it would give soldiers enormous arbitrary powers—but it has not revoked it.

Large parts of the population of the northern West Bank, and of individual cities like Nablus and Jericho, simply cannot leave their home areas without special permits, which are not always forthcoming. If they can travel, how long they spend waiting at checkpoints, from minutes to hours, depends on the time of day and the humour of the soldiers. Several checkpoints may punctuate a journey between cities that would otherwise be less than an hour's drive apart. These checkpoints move and shift every day, and army jeeps add to the unpredictability and annoyance by stopping and creating ad hoc mobile checkpoints at various spots.

According to the UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the number of such obstacles had increased to 534 by mid-December from 376 in August 2005, when OCHA and the Israeli army completed a joint count. When Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, agreed last month to ease restrictions at a few of these checkpoints as a concession to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, human-rights people reported that not only did many of the checkpoints go on working as before; near the ones that had eased up, mobile ones were now operating instead, causing worse disruption and pain.

It is sometimes hard to fathom the logic of the checkpoint regime. One route from Ramallah, the Palestinian administrative capital, to Jerusalem, involves a careful inspection of documents, while on another the soldiers—if they are at their posts—just glance at cars' occupants to see if they look Arab. Israeli law strictly forbids Israeli citizens from visiting the main Palestinian cities, but they can drive straight into Ramallah and Hebron without being challenged, while other cities, such as Jericho and Nablus, remain impermeable. In many places the barrier that Israel is building through the West Bank for security purposes (though in Palestinian eyes to grab more land) is monitored with all the care of an international border, while around Jerusalem the army turns a blind eye to hundreds of people who slip through cracks in the wall as part of their daily commute.

Because of the internal travel restrictions, people who want to move from one Palestinian city to another for work or study must register a change of address to make sure they can stay there. But they cannot. Israel's population registry, which issues Palestinian identity cards as well as Israeli ones, has issued almost no new Palestinian cards since the start of the second intifada in 2000. And that means no address changes either. This also makes it virtually impossible for Palestinians from abroad to get residency in the occupied territories, which are supposed to be their future state, never mind in Israel.
No-through-roads galore

On top of that, in the past year several thousand Palestinians who had applied for residency in the West Bank and were living there on renewable six-month visitor permits have become illegal residents too, liable to be stopped and deported at any checkpoint, not because of anything they have done but because Israel has stopped renewing permits since Hamas, the Islamist movement, took control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) a year ago. (Israel says it is because the PA isn't handing over the requests.)

Like Israelis, Palestinians who commit a traffic offence on the West Bank's highways have to pay the fine at an Israeli post office or a police station. But in the West Bank the only post offices and police stations are on Israeli settlements that most West Bank Palestinians cannot visit without a rare permit. If they do not pay, however, they lose their driving licences the next time the police stop them. They also get a criminal record—which then makes an Israeli entry permit quite impossible.

Some of the regulations stray into the realm of the absurd. A year ago a military order, for no obvious reason, expanded the list of protected wild plants in the West Bank to include za'atar (hyssop), an abundant herb and Palestinian staple. For a while, soldiers at checkpoints confiscated bunches of it from bewildered Palestinians who had merely wanted something to liven up their salads. Lately there have been no reports of za'atar confiscation, but, says Michael Sfard, the legal adviser for Yesh Din, another Israeli human-rights body, the order is still in force. As he tells the story, he cannot help laughing. There is not much else to do.

Head of Los Angeles Transit Drives a Hummer

This reminds us of that great Onion article Report: 98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others

Transit boss' SUV is too big to ignore
Questions about the Hummer would be off-limits. That's what the mayor's press secretary told me as we headed to a City Hall meeting with transportation chief Jaime de la Vega, whose vehicle of choice seems odd for a man in his position.

No way, I told Matt Szabo. How can I not ask about it?

What de la Vega drives is a private matter, argued Szabo.

No it isn't, I told him. It's now a public matter, and I don't know how Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa can have any faith in a transit chief who drives a 2-ton monster in a city with notorious traffic and smog.

It's like having a surgeon general who smokes unfiltered Camels while snacking on Cheetos.

Los Angeles Times

Steve Lopez writes on LA traffic/transit issues here.

David F. Payne on The Servant of the Lord: Language and Interpretation

The following article is now available in PDF:

D.F. Payne, "The Servant of the Lord: Language and Interpretation," Evangelical Quarterly 43.3 (July-Sept. 1971): 131-143.

David Payne looks at the translational issues in Isaiah's Fourth Servant Song.

Is Car-Sharing, Car Free? Absolutely.

Here at the Carfree USA Blog we are not "car-haters." We just don't believe that a person's status is determined by what kind of metal box they get in to every day.

Cars can be a useful tool, when used appropriately.

But not everyone needs to buy and maintain a car, no matter what your television says.

Car ownership takes valuable money out of our pockets and puts them in an industry which is destroying the planet. For people living in urban environments across the USA, car sharing is proving what we always believed, car-ownership is for suckers.

Johnson and her husband, who live in a small Mission District apartment, drive to the grocery store, to pick up friends at the airport and to go hiking. They spend between $30 and $75 a month -- less than insurance used to cost when she owned a car.
"The prices are very low,'' she said. "When I tell people how little we spend, their jaws drop."
SF Gate

Peace with Syria nixed by Israel?

M. J. Rosenberg gets only half of what went wrong with Israel’s foreign policy under Golda Meir in the early 1970s: not only did Golda miss an opportunity for peace with Egypt prior to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, but perhaps even worse, she missed signing a peace treaty with Jordan in those years, because King Hussein wanted most of East Jerusalem back — while allowing some border adjustments (such as the Latrun Salient in Israel’s favor) and Israeli control over the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter. Without a war, Golda could have secured peace treaties with two powerful Arab neighbors and mostly solved the Palestinian issue to boot.

The buzz in the last week or so is that Prime Minister Olmert has nixed a deal with Syria, the fruit of two years of back channel discussions. This is not incontrovertibly proven fact, but it’s intriguing and also frustrating, if true.

When Uncritical Support leads to Disaster by M.J. Rosenberg January 19, 2007

Once upon a time the adage that they "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity" seemed to apply to only one side of the Arab-Israeli divide: the Arab side.

After all, Israeli officials – at least in the first 20 years of Israel's existence – were emphatic that Israeli representatives would go anywhere in the world, at a moment's notice, to negotiate without preconditions with any Arab government willing to talk with Israel.

Prime Minister Levi Eshkol re-stated that principle immediately following the 1967 war, indicating that the lands captured in that war would be on the table if the Arabs would agree to talk. But the Arab League rejected Eshkol's offer with the famous "three noes" -- "no peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel...."

Talk about a missed opportunity. Eshkol viewed the West Bank, Gaza and the other occupied territories as valuable primarily because Israel could give them up in exchange for peace and security. Before the '67 war, Israel had no surplus land to spare and hence nothing to offer the Arabs. Suddenly it did and Eshkol was willing. But the Arabs foolishly let the moment pass.

Israel's major missed opportunity came in 1971. Up to that point, no Arab leader (except Jordan's King Abdullah back in the 1940's) had indicated a clear willingness to negotiate with Israel. But then, Anwar Sadat, Egypt's new President, announced that he was ready to negotiate with Israel. Furthermore, he did not link negotiations to Israeli withdrawal from all the occupied territory.

Sadat was primarily interested in the formerly-Egyptian Sinai Peninsula and, particularly, in regaining the east bank of the Suez Canal so he could re-open the canal to international shipping. As for Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights and the Palestinian issue, that was for negotiating about later.

Israel took note of Sadat's stated willingness to talk. Prime Minister Golda Meir acknowledged that Sadat was "the first Egyptian leader to say he was ready to make peace." But she was not interested in negotiating with Sadat over Sinai, not in 1971. As Meir said later: "We never had it so good." Israel had security and the territories. Who cared what Sadat offered or withheld?

So when Sadat said that in return for an Israeli pullback of 2-3 miles from the east bank of the canal he would begin negotiations toward a full peace, the Israeli government said "no."

President Nixon pushed hard to get the Meir government to explore the offer, as did Israel's Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. But the majority of the Cabinet felt that Israel should reject the pressure and reject the peace offer too. The pro-Israel community in America backed Israel and told Nixon to butt out. The Prime Minister knew best, or so the thinking went.

It was at that point that Sadat decided that the only way he would regain his territory would be through war. He spent two years preparing an attack and then, on Yom Kippur 1973, the Egyptians crossed the canal, wiped out the Israeli defenders, and – with Syrian assistance -- came close to defeating Israel itself.

The war cost Israel 3,000 young lives - all of whom would likely have been spared if Israel had taken up Egypt 's offer. In the end, Israel got peace with Egypt but at the price of surrendering not a mere 2-3 miles of the Sinai, but every last inch of it. And thousands of lost sons, fathers, and brothers. (It is worth noting that the pro-Israel community’s backing of Israel’s resistance to Nixon’s “pressure” contributed to the worst disaster in Israel’s history–a demonstration that unthinking and uncritical “support” is, in fact, anything but).

It is just possible that another colossal missed opportunity is in the making right now. According to the highly respected and well-connected Ha'aretz correspondent, Akiva Eldar, Israeli and Syrian representatives – meeting secretly over a two year period ending in July 2006 – agreed on the framework of a peace treaty.

According to Eldar, the plan provides for a full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights. Syria and Israel would be separated by a buffer zone in the form of a nature park, open to citizens of both countries.

Israel would retain exclusive control over the coveted waters of the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee. Demilitarized and reduced military presence zones, provisions for early warning stations and international security oversight, would be established. And, of critical importance, Syria would end its support for Hezbollah and distance itself from Iran. Likewise, Hamas leader Khaled Meshal would be forced to leave Damascus.

Once these mutual commitments are met, a full peace treaty would be signed and normal relations established.

The Eldar story sounds like a fantasy but it isn't. We know it isn't because key figures mentioned in Eldar's piece – Americans, Israelis and Syrians – have confirmed that the meetings took place.

Most notably, Alon Liel, a former Director General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and Geoffrey Aronson, the American director of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, who facilitated the meetings, confirm that they happened. Liel told Ha'aretz that "Syria is serious about resuming peace talks with Israel and even proposed holding secret high-level talks during the war in Lebanon last summer, which Israel rejected. "

The most significant piece of evidence attesting to the significance of these meetings is that senior US officials say that Vice President Cheney was kept up-to-date about the meetings and indicated no opposition to them. This is critical because some Israelis claim that it is the Bush administration that is preventing Israel from responding to Syrian overtures. Apparently not in this case.

Perhaps, the Bush administration is moving away from its hard-line on dealing with Syria. Perhaps, taking a page from the Baker-Hamilton report, it is concluding that our disdain for the Assad regime should not prevent us from engaging Syria. Not if doing so will lead Syria to stop its trouble-making on the Iraq and Israeli borders and drive a wedge between Iran and Syria (not to mention Hamas and Hezbollah).

Unfortunately, the Israeli government responded to the Ha'aretz report with instant rejection which almost immediately produced a negative response in Damascus.

Obviously, Syria was not going to own up to negotiating with Israel if the Israeli government was in full rejection mode.

By why would it be? Prime Ministers Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu and Barak all pursued the idea of trading the Golan for peace. And Ariel Sharon was aware of the talks that were going on at the time of his stroke and did nothing to halt them

Why not explore how far Damascus will go? The answer is, almost surely, politics.

A weak Olmert government may not feel it can pursue negotiations with Syria right now.

Nevertheless, Olmert should not hesitate to explore the Syrian option.

The possibility that Syria is ready for peace is too important to ignore.

Any peace feeler is worthy of exploration, especially one as promising as this.

By pursuing the Syrian track Israel could succeed in eliminating the threat from its most implacable neighbor. Peace with Syria would remove Iran's entry point into Israel's immediate neighborhood and halt its arms supply, virtually destroying Hezbollah. And Hamas would be almost totally isolated.

Anyone who believes this is not a gamble worth considering simply does not understand what the stakes for America and Israel really are.

But wait. There's good news. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is, according to media reports, ready to make a major push for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations with a view toward reaching an agreement by the time President Bush leaves office. That explains why the Vice President has, apparently, encouraged the unofficial Israeli-Syrian talks (or, at least, not opposed them).

Bush, Cheney and Rice may understand that success in Iraq looks increasingly unlikely and that, by comparison, achieving a final status Israel-Palestinian agreement would be relatively easy. It's legacy time. The Bush administration should go for it.

As for the pro-Israel community and the Congress, it should recall the lesson of 1971. Supporting Israel by supporting the status quo is no support at all. Just visit the military cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem and imagine it without the 3000 graves of soldiers who died heroically in an utterly preventable war.

The views expressed in IPF Friday are those of MJ Rosenberg and not necessarily of Israel Policy Forum. If you have colleagues or friends who would appreciate receiving this weekly letter, or you would like to unsubscribe, send an e-mail to: ipfdc@ipforumdc.org