‘Is it 1938, again?’ Part 1

There were reportedly 700 people in attendance at this two-day event at Queens College (See our khaver Doug Chandler’s report online in the NY Jewish Week.) One thing that struck me at a glance was how few were younger than 60.

I missed the opening talk by Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive head of the Council of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and most of Leonard Fein’s response, but I heard that Hoenlein was brilliant – albeit in a hardline way. Norman Podhoretz, also an able speaker, is even more clearly an unapologetic voice of the right. He still sees George W. Bush as Israel’s best friend ever in the White House and even continues to defend the invasion of Iraq – to the point of nonchalantly suggesting that Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction are still buried somewhere in Syria (a regime so hostile to Saddam that it contributed troops to Bush Senior’s 1991 coalition). He also refuses to see the war as lost.

Still, his concern that European policy may be “Finlandized” in the face of Islamist extremism, analogous to the Soviet intimidation of Finland during the Cold War, may be realistic. (Podhoretz refers to the Cold War as World War III and to the current conflict with Islamism as World War IV.) What is overblown was his outrage that the UK had permitted Iran’s capture of their naval and marine personnel without reprisal; he seemed oblivious to the fact of their safe return within a few days. (In this connection, see Nicholas Kristof’s column of April 29, which describes and links online with documents outlining Iran’s “grand bargain” proposal of May 2003 to normalize relations with the US — which apparently included a promise to refrain from developing nuclear weapons, to end military aid to Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad and to facilitate a two-state solution with Israel.)

Podhoretz wittingly told a joke that touts his lack of self-doubt:

An old Hasidic rebbe is on his death bed, surrounded by grief-stricken disciples. “Oy vey iz mer, who will teach us Torah as brilliantly as the rebbe?” says one. “Oy vey, who will show us wisdom like our beloved rebbe?” moans another. “Oy, who will be our example for righteousness without our wonderful rebbe?” asks a third.

The rebbe stirs and in a low voice demands, “And nothing about my humility?”

Yet Podhoretz admits to a contradiction in his positions. He firmly believes in the nobility and rightness of advancing democratization in the Arab world, but does not believe in democracy for the Palestinians. He sees the Palestinians as not ready for – and not even really desiring – a state of their own, because he sees them as continually rejecting one. He has a point about their violent rejection of the deal on offer in 2000, with Barak and Clinton, but Podhoretz is confusing their rejection of the parameters of a deal as they understood it (and were disappointed by) with the notion that they’d not accept a two-state solution at all.

Irving Louis Horowitz, an emeritus professor of sociology and political science at Rutgers, has a physical speech impediment that makes him a challenge to listen to, but this has not undercut his career. His major point, in a session with Michael Walzer and Alan Dershowitz, was that world Jewry’s problem is not really a question of left versus right; it’s more about the need for solidarity between American and Israeli Jews.

Walzer addressed this question of whether there can be a “unified Jewish front.” He applauded the fact that over 80 percent of American Jews voted Democratic last year and emphasized that the “correct choice” for Jews is the “near left.” He does not see “far left Jews” who reject Israel as part of this front. Walzer culminated his talk with five propositions:

1. Jews are both a nation and a religious community. Israel is an expression of our nationhood, not our religion and needs to be kept as such, although not necessarily in the same exact way as the US traditionally separates government and religion. Israel is as legitimate as any other nation-state.
2. The mistake of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza was huge. The withdrawal from these territories will be the final step in the creation of a secular Jewish nation-state and, he hopes, will also create a secular Palestinian nation-state.
3. It is necessary to understand that part of the Palestinians’ troubles are of their own making. (He excoriated the left’s failure to absolutely condemn terrorism.)
4. You never know if Israel has a true partner for peace until Israel tries its best to engage with such a prospective partner.
5. Support for an ongoing US alliance with Israel. Walzer indicated that the leftist term, “critical support,” is appropriate for such an alignment.

Prof. Walzer proposed that this unified front must exclude the pro-settler movement and the far left. He insisted that the Zionist assumption is that this is NOT 1938. He concluded by referring to writer-activist David Grossman’s observation that Israel suffers from a deep sense of “existential insecurity” despite all that Israel has achieved as a creative society and a powerful state.

To be continued.

Towards Carfree Cities VII - Istanbul, Turkey (August 2007)

Istanbul, Turkey will be hosting Towards Carfree Cities VII from August 27-31, 2007. Our local hosts this year are the Turkish Traffic Safety Association, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University and Istanbul's City and Regional Planning Department. The Annual General Meeting (AGM) of World Carfree Network will take place on the last day, August 31. There will be optional excursions on the weekend after.

This year's conference theme "Building a Livable Future in a Changing Climate" emphasises the positive potential and urgency of addressing global climate change through the creation of high-quality, carfree human habitats.

World Carfree Network

Do you really know how to lock your bike?

Hal gives a refresher course at Streetsblog.

Gas Truck Melts a Freeway in Oakland

You can see more pictures here. Video here.

Thankfully nobody died.

This story is rich with irony about the end of the carbon age. When gas trucks start taking out freeways, perhaps the planet is trying to heal itself in some mystical way.

Unfortunately, for those who live within 5 miles of this incident, all 4 TV networks have placed noisy helicopters in the air above the collapsed freeway for the last 36 hours to breathlessly report this incident. Um, we get it. Stop burning so much fuel with 4 separate live pictures of a pile of concrete.

This situation would become even more ironic if two of the helicopters crashed midair and landed on the gigantic car-culture IKEA superstore near the freeway collapse. The greasy Swedish meatballs and birch veneer bookshelves would surely ignite into another conflagration, which would then require more helicopters to cover that "breaking news." And the good people of West Oakland would have to suffer 4AM helicopters for another 5 days.

Governor Schwarzenegger has made state funds available to regional transit agencies so all transit is free for the day.

Why is it when car commuters face possible delays it is viewed as a state emergency? Perhaps the Governor should consider tearing down the freeway entirely, and with the tens of millions of dollars saved, make transit free every day.

News and Analysis from Meretz USA, 4/27/07

Israeli Independence Day Reflections

This past week, Israel marked its War Memorial Day and celebrated its 59th Independence Day. Coming a week after Holocaust Memorial Day and two weeks after Passover, the Festival of Freedom, Independence Day is a reflective time when many Israelis, both publicly and privately, think about the state of their nation, and their relationship to it.

A particularly interesting "journalistic debate" could be seen in Haaretz over the past two weeks, when two distinguished left-wing columnists, Gideon Levy and Avirama Golan, offered contrasting perspectives on patriotism, and what it means to fly the Israeli flag on Yom Ha'Atzma'ut (as Independence Day is known in Hebrew). In a provocative piece, Gideon Levy explains that he cannot bring himself to fly the flag, as the settler movement had essentially defiled it by hoisting it in the name of their extremist nationalism. Levy writes: "How can I hang at my home the same flag that flies over the homes of the Jewish settlement in the heart of Hebron, which has expelled nearly 20,000 residents from their homes?"

Although agreeing with much of Levy's analysis, Avirama Golan reaches a different conclusion. Explaining, "Why I flew the flag," Golan acknowledges that the Israeli flag, "has served as a belligerent instrument in the hands of those who received a license from the government to exclusively and one-dimensionally represent nationalism. Mutely, the flag was raised by those who overturn peddlers' stalls in Arab cities." However, Golan insists, "a normal people is not supposed to let those with power and authority snatch their symbols from them."

Another difficult issue that comes up anew every Independence Day is the State of Israel's relationship to its Palestinian Arab citizens, who make up no less than 20% of the country's citizenry. Haaretz publisher, Amos Schocken, issued a challenge to the State of Israel: To make next year's Independence Day celebration, the 60th, an event that offers more than a one-sided Zionist perspective. By now, he argues, Israel should be secure enough in its existence to also recognize the Arab experience in the country's formation: "the Nakba - the Palestinian 'Catastrophe,' as the Arabs call the events of 1948 – the loss, the families that were split up, the disruption of lives, the property that was taken away, the life under military government". (Hadash MK Dov Khenin similarly remarked that, "the time has come for the state to recognize the Palestinian people's tragedy.") For a start, Schocken proposes amending the national anthem, "HaTikva" so that it addresses all Israel's citizens, not only Jews.

YNet focused on this theme as well, interviewing an array of Israeli Arab intellectuals and political leaders, who argued that the Israeli Arab demand for equal rights and full partnership in the country should not be regarded as a threat to Israel's existence, nor to the Jewish right to self-determination.

In a somewhat similar vein to Schocken's, esteemed author A.B. Yehoshua suggested this week that, as a first step towards reconciliation, Israelis and Palestinians should establish a joint memorial day: "to honor the deaths of all non-combatant civilians who fell at the hand of war on both sides of the border." Yehoshua believes that, "the ability to also identify with the pain of our enemy's civilian bereavement, regardless of who caused it, would further contribute to the effort of preventing the next war."

Preventing the next war was also on the mind of Gershon Baskin this week, who bemoaned the mutual fear and suspicion that exists between Israelis and Palestinians: "When they see us, they see in us exactly what we see in them. Enemies. Brutal enemies who kill without remorse. The dead have no names for the other side..." Like Yehoshua, Baskin suggests that the healing begin with each side acknowledging the pain and sorrow of the other side.

Notwithstanding the confidence that (as Amos Schocken believes) Israelis should have in Israel's strength and existence, various indicators suggest that this is still not the case. Nehemia Shtrasler argues that, in practical terms, Israel's independence is "just an optical illusion", since Israel remains completely dependent, politically and economically, on the support of the United States. The average Israeli might be even more pessimistic: According to a poll in the Yediot newspaper, a full 47% of those surveyed believe that Israel will not make it to its centennial year in 2048. Perhaps to reflect the recent upsurge in Israeli pessimism, YNet this week published an op-ed by an Israeli ex-pat in Australia, who called on Jewish Israelis to declare the country a failed project and emigrate. In contrast to such post-Zionist sentiments, Avi Sagi and Yedidia Stern lengthily reflected on the importance of a Jewish state as a vehicle for realizing such progressive Jewish principles as "tikkun olam", charity, tolerance and social solidarity.

But not everyone is so blue. Journalist-cum-politician-cum journalist, Tommy Lapid, submitted that "Life is good here," arguing that the Israeli media is responsible for creating feelings of "dejection and despondency", and that - despite Israel's many problems - things are much better than the way the press likes to depict them. Although not as unrestrainedly upbeat, Haaretz editorialized this week that, despite the problems, the implementation of a two-state peace agreement still held out the chance to right the ship of the Israeli state. (In the same editorial, Haaretz also applauded Jews outside Israel who, rather than giving Israel "blind support," are sober and caring in their criticism of Israeli government policy.)

San Francisco Critical Mass - Returns to Normal

"I'm not stuck, I'm watching," said Carollena Figueiredo, 44, of San Francisco, sitting in her Toyota Matrix at Francisco and Mason streets. "It's like a parade. I think it's great."

San Francisco Chronicle

Congratulations to everyone who took it upon themselves to protect this peaceful celebration of transportation choices!

SFist covered the night as well.

Ride along via cellphone cam.

Two Giants Leaving Nuclear Energy Institute

April 2007 was a bad month for the nuclear industry because they lost Thelma Wiggins, left, and Chandler Van Orman, right. These two titans were instrucmental in helping to bring about the current rennaissance in the nuclear industry. AAEA had great relationships with these two individuals and we doubt they will be easily replaced. Thanks Thelma and Chandler for your comradarie.

Thelma is off to pursue her passion of Christian counseling and will be relocating to Columbia, SC after 20 years of service in the industry. Chandler recently participated in the Nuclear Power Roundtable at The State of Environmental Justice in America 2007 Conference at the Howard University School of Law. Chandler has retired, but don't think he will not be influential in whatever he wants to do next. We will miss both of you.

Video of Chandler Van Orman Presentation at EJ Conference

Conyers: Key To Environmental Justice & Climate Mitigation

We are convinced that John Conyers is the logical person in the Congress to pass national environmental justice legislation and to mitigate global warming. Environmental justice is as much about social and civil justice as it is about ecology and pollution. But just as the Dixiecrats used 'intent' to discombobulate civil rights laws, unscrupulous manipulators have an easy tool in environmental obfuscation to scuttle environmental justice. So John Conyers, as Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee should introduce environmental justice legislation - - and not just to codify Executive Order 12898, but a bill with teeth (lawsuit provision). The legislation should also have a carrot - - a project endorsement provision. It just so happens that the Environmental Justice Coalition has a bill ready for him to introduce.

We briefly described these proposals to Congressman Conyers during his recent trip to China (photo: AAEA Prez with Conyers in Beijing). Moreover, his district needs help in saving saving the auto industry. Detroit is hurting. Toyota just took over the number one sales position from GM and Ford is barely dodging bankruptcy every year. We are prepared to work with Mr. Conyers to get the Chinese to invest in Detroit. The Chinese should manufacture their new Chery automobile in Detroit. China should also patent and sale a plug-in fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle in Detroit. John Conyers should meet with Hu Jintao to seal the deal.

Day Tripper: San Francisco to Napa - Carfree

Here's how to do it and what to see.

Carfree Celebrations Across Switzerland

The foundation “la Suisse à vélo” ("Switzerland by bicycle") is launching its national car-free program on Sunday, April 29 in and around Avenches, near the border of Vaud and Fribourg. The "SlowUp" initiative aims to encourage people to use alternative and healthier modes of transportation.

A 32-kilometer road around Morat Lake will be closed to motor traffic between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Cyclists and rollerbladers will take over the road while a variety of entertainment events are planned along the route. The itinerary runs clockwise and can be started from the city of Avenches or Morat. The official kick-off is scheduled in Avenches at 10 a.m.

24 heures

Sounds lovely. Have fun, everyone!

Making desktop search look good

Posted by Ryan Pollock, Google Enterprise

We've just released the newest version of Google Desktop for Enterprise, and if we do say so ourselves, it looks pretty good. Previewing your desktop search results inside the browser helps you find the right documents, emails, and files that much more quickly. We've also increased security with warnings for web sites that might attempt to steal your personal information or install malware on your computer. For those of you who'd like to make Desktop for Enterprise available to a broader segment of your employees, we now support 12 different languages.

We've rolled these features into a Desktop package that offers a completely new look and feel for the sidebar and gadgets, too. Go give it a try.

‘Context’

It was journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, as moderator of a recent program at New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage, who mused in jest that news items about Palestinian casualties might ideally be prefaced as follows: “Partially as a result of the Palestinian Arab refusal to accept the UN partition plan of 1947, X Palestinians were killed today....”

That is the historical context for the armed conflict between the sovereign State of Israel and Palestinian Arabs. This conflict was renewed with the violent reaction to the failed Camp David talks in the summer of 2000. I know that this is a simplification of a complex history; I do not exonerate Jewish parties and Israeli governments of responsibility for bad deeds, bad decisions and even instances of bad faith — but it’s still essentially true. And it’s this context of the Al-Aksa Intifada of the early 2000s that has led to the construction of the security barrier and the huge increase in number and perniciousness of checkpoints in the West Bank. It’s this context that our guest, Hana Barag of Machsom Watch, missed making absolutely clear when she spoke of the humanitarian issues raised by checkpoints.

I believe that the case for Israel is morally strengthened if this matter of context is remembered more often. Blu Greenberg – a writer and Orthodox feminist activist who spoke at the “Is It 1938, Again?” conference on the state of world Jewry at Queens College of the City University of New York, April 22-23 – spoke about context (mentioning the need to counter “half truths”) in the “war of narratives” that Israel is currently losing. Unfortunately, however, Ms. Greenberg’s notion of truth and half truth is very conventional, giving Israel far more credit than it deserves in the pursuit of peace — a quest that Israel has made inconsistently, incompetently, and sometimes even insincerely. There’s plenty of blame to go around for all sides in this sorry history and this makes me and my Meretz colleagues almost alone among a world full of both supporters and detractors of Israel who agree only that the “other side” is at fault.

Where Blu Greenberg was entirely correct, however, is in recounting how an Egyptian-American feminist colleague traveling with her some years back insisted that Israel was at fault for all of the wars. When Greenberg countered this argument, her companion retreated to insisting that Israel was guilty simply for being there. Mind you, Israel really doesn’t need the other side to grant it the ‘right to exist’; what it absolutely requires, however, is that the other side stop disputing its existence. It’s sad that the conflict is still in part about something so basic.

At Queens College on April 22, I again caught up with Prof. Michael Walzer, the political philosopher at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ who is also a member of the Meretz USA advisory board. He raised hackles and hecklers, even with his measured words, for speaking of Israel’s “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians as part of the initial problem. I happen to agree. I audibly raised hackles myself (but anonymously) with a written question, read from the podium, in which I suggested that since most checkpoints are well within the West Bank and not along the border with Israel, the checkpoints are more "punitive" than "protective." Most American Jews are ill prepared to concede such hard truths.

I will say more in another posting about this event, including more on Michael Walzer and Prof. Moshe Halbertal, Alan Dershowitz and others.

$4 Gas by this Summer?

Bummer. Yet another reason to sell your car.

"More and more communities are going to see gasoline that approaches or exceeds $4 a gallon," said John Kilduff, an energy analyst at Man Financial in New York. "Where we're currently at with prices, that's a given."

CNN Money

New Google Apps Demo

Posted by Kevin Gough, Sr. Product & Marketing Manager

The Google Apps website does a pretty good job of describing the various applications, Gmail, Google Calendar, etc., included in Google Apps. However, one of the most powerful aspects of the suite is how integrated the applications are. From accessing email from the personalized start page to adding a appointment to your calendar right from an email, we're working to build a seamless user experience, where you don't have to wait forever for a different desktop application to load before you can get to work. Here's Rajen Sheth, Product Manager, demonstrating some of the unique features of Google Apps.

Congestion Charges Rebuild Transit: London mayor welcomes NYC to the Smartypants Club

Thanks to the combination of congestion charging and record investment in public transport, London is now in the position of being the only major city in the world to have achieved a shift - of 4% - to public transport from private car use. That New York is now to take such a step demonstrates the success that has been made of London's congestion charging scheme.

London mayor Ken Livingstone in The Guardian (UK)

Helping China Understand the Problem

Newton Streets and Sidewalks: Visualizing the problem

Brilliant.

Isseroff on 'Israel Lobby'

I'm under the weather today. Our prolific friend, Ami Isseroff, has notified us of this piece with word that it's "timely both for Six Day War anniversary coming up and for the Israel Lobby issue."

There is good material on Senator Fulbright’s anti-Israel and anti-Jewish animus, but it goes on a bit long and is weakened in my view by Ami’s caustic style. Still, it's worth a look.

Richard Cohen: Why Boycott Israel?

It’s interesting to note that Richard Cohen of the Washington Post is one of the “progressives” attacked by Prof. Alvin Rosenfeld in a paper published by the American Jewish Committee for being an extreme Israel basher. Yet it’s this same Richard Cohen who eloquently complains here about the vehemence of anti-Israel sentiment coming from the left:

In Iran, the government overturned the convictions of six men who, among other things, killed a young couple because they were walking together in public. In China, local authorities seized about 60 women and forcibly aborted their pregnancies. In Russia, the Putin government expanded its control of the media. In Cuba . . . oh, well, you already know. But what you may not know is that given such a vast palette of injustice and depredations, the British National Union of Journalists made a truly original move: It singled out Israel to boycott.

The boycott, mind you, is not a journalistic one. Instead, it will extend to lemons and melons and that sort of thing. The boycott was issued as "a gesture of support for the Palestinian people," some of whom, as it happens, abducted a BBC correspondent, Alan Johnston. One group has claimed that it executed him, although no proof has been offered. Suffice it to say the situation is dire.

What possessed the journalist union's board – in a vote of 66 to 54 – to take such action? The question is worth posing because it followed a similar vote last year by British academics (later rescinded) to avoid, under pain of death or something, their Israeli colleagues. And, more important, it is yet another bleat, in Europe and in this country, from people and organizations that, for good reasons and bad, have simply had it with Israel. Why won't the pushy Jewish state shape up?

In some sense, it is a fair enough question. The wrongful and counterproductive occupation of the West Bank is now in its 40th year. Settlements continue to go up, and the government of Ehud Olmert, weak and hapless, is unable or unwilling to contain them. The government proved its incompetence in the Lebanon war of the summer past, managing to enhance Hezbollah's standing and not managing to retrieve the two captured soldiers in whose name the war was launched in the first place. For Israel – but really for Lebanese civilians most of all – the war was a disaster.

But Sudan kills by the score in Darfur and Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe beats his opponents to a pulp, and in almost all of the Arab world there is no such thing as freedom of the press. In Israel there not only is, but the press is as rambunctious as can be found anywhere.

The British journalists say they are moved by the plight of the Palestinian people, and they are right to be. But the misery of a Gazan or a West Banker is not solely Israel's doing. The government of Gaza is the political arm of a terrorist organization, and if the West Bank is suffering – and it is – the cause is not only Israeli land lust but also a morbid Israeli fear of terrorism. British journalists would no doubt approve similar measures if London's city buses had not once but repeatedly been blown to smithereens by passengers with the exact fare and belts of explosives.

So what explains this fury at Israel – and only at Israel? What explains this need to denounce, to boycott? Some of it surely comes from the uncritical support that Israel gets from the United States, which to lefties all over the world is a vile state, maybe worthy – if it were not for jeans, movies and hip-hop – of a boycott itself.

Some of it no doubt reflects frustration from the efforts of Jewish organizations to suffocate any criticism of Israel and to hurl the epithet "anti-Semite" at anyone with an odd bent to his thinking. But some of it, surely, is anti-Semitism itself, a rage at the impudent, pushy Jew and this state created in the midst of the Arab world. Forgotten, conveniently and appallingly, is history itself and the reason for Israel's creation. This does not excuse injustice to Palestinians, it merely explains. But it is an explanation so soaked with the blood of Jews as to seem utterly concocted: It cannot be! But it was.

The British journalists, like the academics before them, dare to tread where an army of goons has gone before. If they do not recognize the ember of anti-Semitism still glowing within them, they ought to park themselves before a mirror and ask why, of all the nations, they single out Israel for reprimand and obloquy. This business of assigning to Jews a special burden, for seeing in them more of mankind's bad qualities and less of its good, has a dark and ugly pedigree: the Chosen People, again -- and again in the wrong way.

American Pedicab Industry Threatened

The Economist

Tammy Shapiro On Reaching Campus Youth

TAMARA (TAMMY) SHAPIRO, a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin (Madison), is the executive director of the Union of Progressive Zionists (UPZ). This is an abridged version of her article in the spring 2007 issue of ISRAEL HORIZONS:

The organized Jewish community, including the 31 organizations of the Israel on Campus Coalition, knows that anti-Israel activity and sentiment have increased on campuses, but our current strategy for facing this challenge is fatally flawed. We are following a strategy that I call Don't Hate, Celebrate, accentuating an appreciation of Israeli culture on campus.

[Yet] this strategy offers nothing in between being unconditionally pro-Israel and anti-Zionist. Either you can hate Israel or celebrate her. The vast majority of college students don't really want to choose either, but when presented with only these two options, many drift toward the one that promises progress and change. Unfortunately, with challenges such as divestment and boycott, only those who hate are currently offering such possibilities.

The changing tide of the debate is currently framed by people concerned with the welfare and livelihood of Palestinians. A college student who attends one event educating about human rights abuses in the West Bank and another promoting falafel and folk dancing as Israeli culture will not decide on that basis that Israel is a legitimate state. Progressive Jewish college students, defined by their serious political outlook, are not interested in cheerleading and cultural celebrations when they identify pressing issues that must be addressed.

Indeed, propelled by prominent professors and now a former president, the authority of this new anti-Israelism is difficult to argue with. If the Jewish community continues to operate under the assumption that we are fighting a public image battle, we will most certainly fail. Jewish college students at the forefront of this battle will continue to suffer demoralization.

The very real images of the occupation will not go away. No amount of programming on technological achievement or the advancement of gay rights in Israel can override them, and celebrating Israeli culture certainly won't. It makes me sad that the Jewish community tries to hide from the realities of the occupation, and even more fearful that we ask our youth to do likewise.

What do we need to do to engage most Jewish college students with Israel? Instead of celebrating, we should be activating. College students are interested in finding problems they can take ownership of and have a role in solving. Zionism is compelling because it is an attempt to build a light unto nations. If the Jewish community identified and promoted activists still working toward this goal in Israel today, they would connect more fully to the idealism of college students.

Jewish students would relate to the country if they were connected to their young Israeli counterparts who, like themselves, are working tirelessly to fix the problems in their own society. Students would take more interest in the country if they were informed of the conversations occurring within Israel, including the large segment of the population who criticize Israeli policies sharply and are determined to change them. Students would feel more confident in their own views of the country, if they understood that many opinions the American Jewish community often condemns, are legitimate within Israeli society.

This Don't hate, activate” strategy may also attract individuals that the Jewish community perceives as problematic. It asks students to support those actually working for change in Israel, instead of trying to isolate them with other strategies such as boycotts.

Some might argue that no one is going to persuade individuals promoting anti-Israelism on campus to do otherwise, but I disagree. There are two groups of people who hold anti-Israel views: There are those who have post-nationalist ideals and thereby take conceptual or principled issue with Israel. And there are others who, as global citizens concerned with human rights around the world, regard Israel's treatment of the Palestinians as an urgent issue needing change. If we acknowledge that we, as Zionists, agree with many of this second group's concerns, including the way in which Palestinians do indeed suffer, they may be willing to listen to our views about Israel’s legitimacy. If we present programs about Israelis actively working for progressive change, they might be able to see Israel as a society they also can relate to.

We need to offer to precisely these people alternative strategies for changing the current situation in Israel. The social-justice minded Jewish and non-Jewish students who support divestment, boycotts and other anti-Israel strategies do so because they are the only options offered as a way to make change.

How many socially-conscious college students think Israel is an apartheid state because no other viable idea has been placed in their heads? When faced with a choice between Israel as perfect and Israel as apartheid, many understandably choose the latter. Furthermore, how many students were turned off by campus Hillel telling them that they weren't allowed to think the way that they do?

If we admit Israel's flaws and genuinely show a commitment to fixing them, we may be able to connect with both these groups. The Union of Progressive Zionists is committed to doing exactly that, but the UPZ can't do it alone. We, the Jewish community, need to offer space on campus for questioning and allow students to understand the full texture of Israeli society. After all, doesn't our tradition teach us to question?

Patrick Moore Bias Against African American Environmentalist Association

Patrick Moore, right, publicly supported nuclear power in 2005. The African American Environmentalist Association (AAEA) publicly supported nuclear power in 2001. Moore avoids mentioning AAEA as an environmental group that supports nuclear power or Norris McDonald as the first environmentalist in America to support nuclear power. This bias is unfortunate, particularly since AAEA is still the only environmental organization in the United States that actively supports nuclear power. AAEA was also the first environmental group to support nuclear power.

In addition to bringing support for nuclear power from an early member of Canada's Greenpeace, he has evidently chosen to bring the environmental movement's special green brand of elitism too. Maybe it is just a misguided quest to try to rewrite history to make himself the first environmentalist to support nuclear power.

See Also: CASEnergy Coalition Hostile

Evidence:

The Washington Post

The Wall Street Journal

The Hamilton Spectator

E&E TV

Nuclear Energy Assembly Speech

Congressional Testimony

NEI Nuclear Notes Interview (1, ....)

(And numerous other instances but you get the idea)

Of course, Norris McDonald remembers the many years that he was out there all alone without Moore or any of the other 'prominent,' 'international' individuals he consistently mentions. Nothing can change the fact that Norris McDonald was the first environmentalist to publicly support nuclear power in the United States and AAEA was the first environmental organization to do so.

Bloomberg's plan to save NYC from cars

Download the whole thing here (big pdf)

If you dive in, please come back and give us your take in the comments.

The Work of ‘Machsom Watch’

A “machsom” is Hebrew for checkpoint. On Wednesday, April 18th, Hanna Barag of Machsom Watch addressed guests of Meretz USA.

Hanna Barag has been a member of Machsom Watch since 2002. A retired political organizer, the mother of two and grandmother of four, she was born in Haifa, grew up in Tel Aviv, and is now living in Jerusalem.

Machsom Watch was founded in February 2001 by a group of women. It includes 400 Israeli women– and only women– who observe, report on, and document events at the checkpoints in the West Bank and Jerusalem. In cases of gross human rights violations, severe intimidation, and restrictions on movement, Machsom Watch tries to intervene and, where possible, to prevent them.

Ms. Barag is literally a little old lady, a lively and intensely dedicated woman in her 70s. She was full of praise for Meretz MK Ran Cohen, who has been a great help for their activities — including the escort of tours for other MKs who come to learn of the hardships and abuses forced on people by the checkpoints.

What Hana Barag and her colleagues do is of great moral and humanitarian consequence, but her talk was full of extraneous political observations that were of questionable value. Can she validly say that the machsomim are not really there for security? She made the point that if they were all along the West Bank border with Israel, she wouldn’t be engaged in this activism; most are well into the West Bank, but she did answer positively that she had twice witnessed instances where people were disarmed who might well have intended an attack. Yet even in this response, she wondered aloud whether these weren’t “tests” staged by Israel’s Shin Bet.

It's important for Palestinians to see Israelis who are other than soldiers or settlers oppressing them. But I wish that she had answered more clearly my question about how the Intifada boomeranged against the Palestinians with the imposition of the security barrier and the proliferation of checkpoints, with all their noxious and arbitrary procedures as illustrated by Hanna’s presentation. Although it is mainly innocents who suffer at the checkpoints, this is not a conflict which is simply a matter of terrible Israelis oppressing innocent Palestinians. The truth remains a context that we discount at Israel’s peril: if not for the Intifada that began in 2000 and has taken 1,000 Israeli lives, there would be many fewer checkpoints.

F.F. Bruce on Gospel Introduction - Part 2

A little sooner than promised, the following article is now available on-line in PDF:

F.F. Bruce, "Some Aspects of Gospel Introduction (Part 2)," The Evangelical Quarterly 14 (1942): 264-280.

Quotable quotes:

It could have been by no means so easy as some form-­critics seem to think to invent Sayings of Jesus in those early years, when so many of His disciples were about, who could remember what He had said and not said. As Dr. Vincent Taylor says, “If the Form-Critics are right, the disciples must have been translated to heaven immediately after the Resurrec­tion”. Besides, so far as our definite information goes, the early Christians were careful to distinguish between Sayings of Christ and their own inferences or judgments. Compare Paul’s careful distinction in 1 Cor. vii: “I, not the Lord,” and again, “not I, but the Lord”.

The early preachers had not only friendly eyewitnesses to reckon with; there were others less-well disposed who were also conversant with the main facts of the ministry and death of Jesus. The first proclaimers of the Kerygma could not afford in their preaching to risk inaccuracies (not to speak of wilful manipulation of the facts), which might at once be exposed by some who would be only too glad to do so. On the contrary, one of the strong points in the original apostolic preaching is the confident appeal to the knowledge of the hearers: “as ye yourselves also know” (Acts ii. 22), said Peter at Pentecost when narrating the evangelic facts; even the house of the Gentile Cornelius was presumed to be acquainted with the main outline of the story of Jesus from the baptism of John onwards (Acts x. 36ff.). Had there been any tendency to depart from strict historical accuracy, this would have served as a further cor­rective. [p.274]

---

Mr. Douglas Jerrold tells us that when he approached Dr. W. R. Inge to write a Life of Christ for Benn’s Sixpenny Library, he received a terse post-card to this effect: “As there are no materials for a life of Christ, I regret that I cannot comply with your request.” The answer, though paradoxical, was wise. We cannot know Him kata sarka. We must either know Him as He is presented to, us in the Gospel, or not know Him at all. If we choose the earliest of the four Evangelists as our teacher, he will lead us to confess with the centurion under the shadow of. the Cross, “Truly this Man was the Son of God the same goal in reality as we reach then under the guidance of the latest Evangelist we say with Thomas in the presence of the risen Saviour, “My Lord and my God”. [p.278]

Driving makes you fat (192.0)

SF Gate

Rev Al Sharpton Holds 9th Annual MLK, Jr. Conference

AAEA President Norris McDonald attended The Ninth Annual 'Keepers of the Dream' Dinner and Awards Ceremony, sponsored by Al Sharpton's National Action Network. The accompanying four day conference featured presidential candidates John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Bill Clinton also spoke at the event. The event was held at the Sheraton in New York City.

Awardees included Melody Spann-Cooper (Excellence in Business), W. Frank Fountain (Corporate Executive Award), Rev Dr. Frederick Haynes (Wyatt T. Walker Service Award), Leo Hindrey (Outstanding Business Award), Spike Lee (Humanitarian Award), Soledad O'Brien (Woman of Excellence Award), Forest City Ratner (Community Development Award), Karen Boykin-Towns (Community Service Award) Christopher Williams (Outstanding Enrepreneur) and Richard Womack (MLK, Jr. Labor Award).

The award to Antonio "L.A." Reid was withdrawn over the 'Don Imus' factor.

China: Dynamic Economy & Air Pollution

By Norris McDonald. I recently spent two weeks in China and was astounded by the incredible growth. There were building cranes everywhere. Even though I anticipated seeing fast growth, I was not prepared for the scale of building I witnessed. I was also amazed by the state-of-the-art agricultural practices. Clearly, China is not being covered accurately by the American media. China is building while America is talking and writing.

It was great to be a tourist and visit Tiananmen Square (behind me in picture), the People's Congress (with Board Member Derry Bigby), President Hu Tsingtao's Office complex and the Great Wall. I also took in some nightlife in Beijing, Weifang and Hong Kong. China is a great country and Hong Kong (7 million people) is a mega metropolitan area when combined with its Mainland neighbor, Shenzhen (10 million people).

MORE

Bloomberg to back congestion pricing for NYC

This is great news.

The revenues generated will help fix the subway, buses, and hopefully leave extra cash for a world-class bike network through Manhattan.

A webinar to help you get even more out of your Google Search Appliance

Posted by Kevin Smith, Head of Enterprise Partnerships

Just unwrapped your shiny new Google Search Appliance? Maybe you've had one for a while and would like to get even more out of your enterprise search experience? Or perhaps you've been shopping for an enterprise search solution and want to see what the yellow box is all about? Well, check out our upcoming webinar with non-linear creations, "Secrets of Success with the Google Search Appliance".

A Google Enterprise Professional partner, non-linear creations will reveal proven approaches for success with the Google Search Appliance. Learn how to successfully return results from critical data sources, effectively fine tune your enterprise search engine, and integrate the Google Search Appliance with your enterprise content management system.

To learn more and sign up for the webinar, visit here.

F.F. Bruce on Gospel Introduction (Part 1 of 3)

The following article is now available in PDF:

F.F. Bruce, "Some Aspects of Gospel Introduction (Part 1)," The Evangelical Quarterly 14 (1942): 174-197.

Look out for part 2 next week.

Quotable quote:

In the fascination of tracking down the original oral and documentary sources of our Gospels, the student at times for­gets that each Gospel ought primarily to be studied for its own sake, and in the light of the distinctive purpose of each of the four Evangelists. Whereas the sources are largely hypothetical, the Gospels themselves in their present Greek dress are there before our eyes, each an individual literary work with its own characteristic viewpoint, which has in great measure controlled the choice and presentation of the subject-matter. In attempting to discover how they were composed, we must by all means beware of regarding them as mere scissors-and-paste compilations. [p.174]

Israelis: Jews are happy, Arabs ‘oppressed’

The following is an edited version of J. Zel Lurie’s column, written April 18 for publication in the April 23 issue of the Jewish Journal of South Florida:

There is no logical reason for Israelis to feel happy and content. Yet they are. At least the middle class ... is. ... The news, on the other hand, was horrible. Another alleged rape victim of President Moshe Katzav surfaced, making it eleven or was it twelve women who claimed that he used his high office to rape them.

The police were investigating the income tax authorities for taking bribes to lessen tax payments. And the Minister of Finance, a pal of Prime Minister Olmert, was found to have large cash deposits in his bank account. Where did the money come from?

Forty percent of Israelis were still living below the poverty line, which was set by the government a a low level. But business was good and the CEOs were taking higher and higher pay. In a decade or two, Israel had shifted from an egalitarian society to one with one of the largest wage gaps in the world.

There was also a glimmer of good news. Olmert was meeting every fortnight with the head of the Palestine Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. The long freeze, based on impossible conditions for resuming talks, had been broken by the intervention of Secretary of State Condi Rice.

None of this affected my family who were occupied with the fantastic wedding I described in my last column. The daily paper was still delivered every morning but I was the only one who paid it close attention. The days when calls are forbidden between 9 and 10 in the evening, when television news is on, are long over. Israelis are no longer glued to the hourly news.

Some of them never read a newspaper or listen to the TV news. Politicians are by nature corrupt, they say. It is an unfortunate fact of life that these corrupt politicians can declare war, as they did last July, and cost the lives of reservists.

Meanwhile, the miserable days of the suicide bombers are history. The middle class Israeli Jew is happy and content.

Arab Citizens Feel Oppressed

I was occupied, as usual, with the character of Israel and the attitudes and actions of its Jewish and Palestinian citizens.

... I was shocked to read, in a Foreign Office publication, a statement by an Israeli Arab teacher: “I feel oppressed,” she said bluntly, “I need to be liberated.”

I knew that Israeli-Arab citizens, who are 18 percent of the population, suffer discrimination by every government department. I also knew that this became starkly evident during the Second Lebanon War when 4,000 Hezbollah rockets fell on the Galilee, which is 50 percent Arab. Jewish cities and towns had shelters, Arab cities and villages did not. Yet, for the first time, American Jewish charities [and the Jewish Agency for Israel -- ed.] have allocated emergency funds for Arabs in the Galilee.

“What’s with this oppression?” I asked Mohammed Darawshe [former communications director for Givat Haviva, who now works for the Abraham Fund -- ed.] at his home in Iksal, an Arab town about five miles from Nazareth. First, Mohammed told me how his grandfather had saved the town during the War of Independence in 1948.

During the Arab rebellion in 1936-39 his grandfather had sheltered the Jews of nearby Tel Adashim. When the Palmakh arrived in 1948 and ordered the town evacuated to Lebanon, his grandfather walked to Tel Adashim and got the Jews to rescind the Palmah’s order. Still about a third of the village became refugees in Lebanon.

As for oppression, Mohammed told me many stories of discrimination. Here is the first and the last: Mohammed says that his family’s land, and that of other families in Iksal, was confiscated by the Israeli Land Authority. He pays the authority rent on an enclave that contains his home and those of his parents and two brothers and one large garage.

Mohammed married a woman from Issawiya, a village on Mt. Scopus, which was incorporated into East Jerusalem in 1967. She became an Israeli citizen in 1995. That would be impossible today.

Her sister lives in Chicago with an Israeli Arab who is an American citizen. Her travel document says that she must return home within two years. Last summer she arrived at the Allenby Bridge four days late. She had given birth in Chicago and there were complications. She was hospitalized for two weeks.

She was refused entry to Israel. She won’t see her parents and siblings until she learns enough English to qualify for American citizenship and a passport. Even with an American passport, under current regulations, she won’t be able to land at Ben-Gurion airport, but must go through Amman.

Mohammed is currently organizing the annual Children’s Festivfal of Peace for Arab and Jewish youth on behalf of the Goodwin Foundation in New Jersey. It will be held in May.

I spoke to Shuli Dichter, co-director of Sikkuy, which documents government discrimination against its Arab citizens. I asked him how many of the Arabs he comes in contact with feel oppressed. “All of them,” he replied.

And the better educated they are, I added, the more they have taken advantage of Israeli institutions of higher learning, the more they feel oppressed.

Carfree in San Diego

Ramie Tateishi is doing it.

Palestinian ‘right of return’ debated

The following account came in from the World Union of Meretz:

The debate, which was part of the Doha Debates series chaired by Tim Sebastian, centered on the question of the Palestinian right of return.

Laying out the Israeli case against the Palestinian right of return, Yossi Beilin argued that no Israeli government will ever agree to the Palestinian claim to a "right of return," since the acceptance of such a claim would undermine the very existence of a Jewish state. Moreover, the very logic of the two-state solution, which is the only widely acceptable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, stipulates that there be two nation-states – a Jewish one and a Palestinian one – living side by side. In contrast, any peace agreement that accepted the right of return would mean that a Palestinian state would supplant the Israeli one, and that another a Palestinian state would be established alongside it, resulting in two Palestinian states and no Jewish one.

Yet if Israel will never accept the Palestinian claim to a right of return, Yossi added, nor should the Palestinians be expected to give up on it. Instead, Yossi called for a pragmatic approach along the lines of the Geneva Initiative, which outlines a practical and definitive solution to the problem of the refugees in the context of a package deal that includes all the other outstanding issues between the two sides, including Jerusalem and Temple Mount.

Pointing out that the Geneva Initiative does not make any mention of the right of return, Yossi asserted that no political agreement between Israel and the Palestinians should be expected either to accept or reject the Palestinian right of return, since the issue is best relegated to the place of national mythology, where people's dreams and aspirations can live on without jeopardizing their collective future. Indeed, easy as it is, and even appropriate, for historians like Ilan Pappe (who participated in the debate) to speak in favor of the Palestinian right of return, the role of statesmen and politicians on both sides, Yossi concluded, was to make sure that people's dreams do not become national nightmares.

In arguing against the political viability of the Palestinian right of return, Yossi was joined by Bassem Eid, a long-time Palestinian human rights campaigner. They were challenged by Israeli academic Ilan Pappe and Ali Abunimah, an American of Palestinian origin living in Chicago.

One final note: The debate took place in front of an audience made up of people living in or visiting Qatar, with university and high-school students from a wide range of mostly Arab and Muslim countries comprising about half of the audience. The debate culminated in a vote of the audience, almost 82% of which voted that the Palestinians should not give up their right of return, against 18% who voted that they should. At the same time that this debate took place, Arab League ministers convened in Riyadh and debated the same topic in the context of their deliberations on the regional peace initiative. Their final draft resolution, reiterating the language of the Arab Peace Initiative from Beirut, March 2002, called for a "just solution" to the problem of the Palestinian refugees but - significantly - avoided any mention of the phrase "right of return."

Farewell to Baghdad

'Our' correspondent in Iraq, a contract advisor in economic development who has requested anonymity, is apparently leaving for good now:

Orhan Pamuk cites some unknown (at least to me) Turkish poet in one of his novels: "Drunk on the wine of hazard. You are thirsty like a buzzard." That is not me. I am sated on the wine of hazard. This time I'm outta here for good (maybe), though I will miss this place and especially its people.

Meanwhile, Kurt Vonnegut had the bad taste to die yesterday. I will miss him. And Kilgour Trout. One of my favorite Trout stories – I hope I remember it right – involves someone who comes to earth from another planet to cure cancer and warn of a massive impending disaster. On his planet, people communicate by tap dancing and farting. As he frantically tries to deliver his message to the first person on earth he sees, the person looks at him quizzically then brains him with a golf club.

Several of you noted a Vonnegut-like anger and bitterness creeping – or perhaps galloping – into my reports. It is true. My increasing frustration has partly fed on the disconnect between the situation here and the happy-talk I see on the news.

In answer to an email a couple of days ago, I looked at an internal report by the Department of State to Congress. It listed the number of troops here. We are used to hearing of 130,000 or so, but here is a fact or two. There are even more contractors – read mercenaries – than soldiers in the field. They are performing military tasks, such as guarding, that soldiers historically have done everywhere. This is not the multi-national force. They either are included in the American numbers or make a trivial addition to them. In fact, these mercenaries are paid to do what military does not want to do – kind of like migrant laborers in California. (You know from my past reports that no Americans guard the Iraqi Parliament building where Friday the Thirteenth occurred Thursday – only Chileans, Peruvians, Ugandans, Georgians, Colombians, et al. — English is not required.)

But wait, there's more. We forgot the 130+ companies (okay, some of them were included above) providing security coverage for convoys supplying the military – forget about protecting us, that is not a military function, even though we are working for State. We do not have a clue how many folks work for these private security contractors. Sandi is a small company and it probably has 120 here right now, plus others in convoys, etc. DynCorps numbers are almost not countable. So, what does that come to? I figure that, not including private security contractors, the total is about 475,000 troops (less than 30% are US military, though of course we are sending bombers now). What does it say about who's really fighting? What does it say about the surge as a marginal increase in the total force? What does this say about whether we are winning or losing? Our administration does not need a timetable, it needs an abacus.

The security situation on the ground has created continual moving targets and more frustration for me. Our work has taken me farther and farther from the reasons I came back, and the murders and kidnappings have murdered the project that meant most to me and my hope for making a dent here. And finally, I have become frustrated with my own lack of courage to quit or to try to do what I came to do despite the challenges and changes, and to take the contracting and other consequences for doing so.

But there was a point at which things moved me up a notch on the real anger scale. Now that I am leaving, I can admit this. It happened about a month and a half ago, two weeks before I moved to a new room. The reason for the move was that I had been more or less Katusha'd, and so I commandeered one of the safer rooms in the compound. At the moment of the attack it became easy to decide that this "challenge to die for" was not worth dying for. My statements about the safety of our compound did not start out as a lie, but they became one. I am sorry for perpetuating it.

Actually, it was not my room that was hit, but Tamra's next door and across the hall, maybe 20 feet away. Our "hotel" literally is built like a brick. It has interwoven 1" rebar in a foot thick cement roof/ceiling that slowed the rocket's penetration. Its walls are 9" thick and composed of solid brick sandwiched between hefty slices of cement. If the building had been built like, say, the World Trade Center. ...

Tamra was in Dubai. That is the only reason she is not now the hole that her chair became. Because of ordinance set off by the rocket's red glare, a grenade and some magazines went off, and CS gas (kept here illegally of course) got loose through the buildingl. Then there was the fire department 's water . Yes, there is a Baghdad fire dept., and, boy, are they busy. The fire and water "edited" much of our hard copy research, criticized our deliverables, and commented on almost all of our equipment. My computer still panics when it sees a large hose. My room smelled like a combination tobacco growers' convention and feed lot lagoon, an probably still does. We cleaned up, salvaged, recovered quickly, and met all our deadlines. Luckily for recordkeeping, this is the electronic age. In the end, nobody was even slightly injured – a miracle given that we had no evacuation plan (despite my complaints and others' too). The explosion, which, by the way, managed to meet the criterion of a window rattler, happened too fast for me to get scared and had its humorous elements. But you had to be there.

Our incident (reported by Aljazeera as an attack on a Mosad/CIA compound) was the third of such "Iraqis' Greatest Hits" here over a period of a week or so. One of the other two caused two deaths and some injuries, 150 meters or so from us. And while I can guess at reasons for the attacks, the reasons do not matter. Our good guys finally got the rocketeer a couple of weeks later, but not before he hit the International [or Green] Zone, or the Tigris between us and the IZ, five or six more times. The IZ is hit a lot and missed a lot, and we can never be sure where things originate unless we are outside and hear the whistle. Two people died in the IZ the day before yesterday. It was a beautiful day, so while the Parliament was exploding we ate lunch outside by Saddam's old – and now the Embassy's – grand pool, about ten meters from where the mortar hit them. Twenty meters or so on the other side, the debris rained on the roof of a friend. She says that since our last visit a week ago, she no longer can sleep. She is going home in early May. We have Humvees in our "yard" fairly regularly, and from time to time American soldiers sandbagged into a cozy nest on the roof of the building – former home to the hapless Bulgarian Embassy – that I used to climb with Joker to watch sunset on the Tigris. Going away from here is good.

Sort of good. As before, our team met and surpassed performance expectations, but fell short of what we wanted to do and what I expected from myself. People here need a lot. We have taken a lot from them and they have multiplied our theft by taking lives and dignity from each other. As I leave I cannot suppress the guilt I feel for what I failed to do, and yet how glad I am to get out anyway. No matter what you hear on TV, and no matter how valient and dedicated our soldiers are, there are no heroes here. Only a sickening scar on our national character that I believe no amount of political and media plastic surgery will beautify. Where is Ice-Nine when you need it?

See you after May Day or Karl Marx's birthday.

On the road again...

Posted by Ryan Pollock, Product Marketing

The enterprise gang is hitting the road once again. In May and June we're doing 13 Google @ Work seminars throughout the US.

If you're not familiar with the Google @ Work seminars, they're a great opportunity to learn how the Google products you know and love can be used inside of your business. Each seminar will feature experts in products such as Google Apps, the Google Search Appliance, the Google Mini, and Google Earth Enterprise. In fact, many of the people who write this blog will be there!

And best of all, it's completely free for you attend. We'll even treat you to breakfast.

We'll be visiting these cities in May and June:

San Francisco, CA Tuesday, May 15
Los Angeles, CA Wednesday, May 16
San Diego, CA Thursday, May 17
Seattle, WA Tuesday, May 22
Denver, CO Wednesday, May 23
Phoenix, AZ Thursday, May 24
Chicago, IL Wednesday, May 30
Columbus, OH Thursday, May 31
New York, NY Monday, June 4
Hartford, CT Thursday, June 7
Philadelphia, PA Tuesday, June 12
Pittsburgh, PA Wednesday, June 13
Detroit, MI Thursday, June 14

Space is limited, so if you want to attend, make sure to register today.

We're looking forward to meeting you soon.

Our Condolences To the Families of Virginia Tech Victims

EPA Publishes National U.S. Greenhouse Gas Inventory

The U.S. EPA has released the national greenhouse gas inventory, which finds that overall emissions during 2005 increased by less than one percent from the previous year. The report, Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse GasEmissions and Sinks: 1990-2005, was published after gathering commentsfrom a broad range of stakeholders across the country. President Bush has a goal to reduce America's greenhouse gas intensity 18 percent by 2012.

Total emissions of the six main greenhouse gases in 2005 were equivalentto 7,260 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. These gases include 1) carbon dioxide, 2) methane, 3) nitrous oxide, 4) hydrofluorocarbons, 5) perfluorocarbons, and 6) sulfur hexafluoride. The report indicates that overall emissions have grown by 16 percent from 1990 to 2005. This report is the latest in an annual set of reports that the United States submits to the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which sets an overall framework for intergovernmental efforts to tackle the challenge posed by climate change. The inventory also calculates carbon dioxide emissions that are removed from the atmosphere by "sinks," e.g., through the uptake of carbon by forests, vegetation, and soils.

Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2005 Report

Clean Sky Coalition Should Alter Its Advertising Campaign

The Clean Sky Coalition is advertising people with coal on their faces and using the statement, "Face It, Coal Is Filthy." Unfortunately, the image of whites or light skinned people of color with coal smeared on their faces appears to associate darkness with filth. Lose this campaign. Clearly no Blacks were involved with the creation of the ads. Typical.

The images advertised in The Washington Times and on the Clean Sky Coalition website, left, immediately caught our eye -- but for the wrong reasons. Frankly, the campaign is projecting the wrong image to black people. Change your campaign. It distracts from your important message. James Brown might be dead but if he were alive today he would criticize this ad campaign: "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud - - Just Like Coal."

Rosenberg tries too much 'empathy'

While I respect MJ Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum, and see us as being in the same dovish pro-Israel camp, I have a little bone to pick with his most recent weekly column, “Try a Little Empathy,” of 4/13/07.

Although it's perhaps surprising that American Enterprise Institute neoconservatives would have a dialogue with Arab thinkers at all, I thought that the tone and substance of Brooks' column was exactly right. Brooks is more than a cut above the average neocon for perception and sensitivity (even "empathy," as Rosenberg put it) and is actually dovish regarding peace with the Palestinians.

This is what I wrote in Jan. '06 about a column by Brooks that had especially impressed me:

In his New York Times column of November 17, 2005, Brooks argued poignantly for a negotiated peace with the Palestinians and against a continuation of Israeli "disengagement." Among the cogent, even liberal, observations made by Brooks: "...unilateral disengagement is no option because the Israelis will never do it well. Driven by normal self-interest and by the bitterness of war, Israelis will grab too much land, and impose too much pain. ... Unilateral action is bound to be unjust and thus unstable."

I very much fear that Brooks is correct when he sums up his disappointment with the conference he attended in Jordan, co-sponsored by AEI, in “A War Of Narratives,” April 8, 2007:

I just attended a conference that was both illuminating and depressing. ... the idea was to get Americans and moderate Arab reformers together to talk about Iraq, Iran, and any remaining prospects for democracy in the Middle East.

As it happened, though, the Arab speakers mainly wanted to talk about the Israel lobby. ... Speaker after speaker triumphantly cited the work of Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer and Jimmy Carter as proof that even Americans were coming to admit that the Israel lobby controls their government.

The problems between America and the Arab world have nothing to do with religious fundamentalism or ideological extremism, several Arab speakers argued. They have to do with American policies toward Israel, and the forces controlling those policies.

As for problems in the Middle East itself, these speakers added, they have a common source, Israel. One elderly statesman noted that the four most pressing issues in the Middle East are the Arab-Israeli dispute, instability in Lebanon, chaos in Iraq and the confrontation with Iran. They are all interconnected, he said, and Israel is at the root of each of them.

We Americans tried to press our Arab friends to talk more about the Sunni-Shiite split, the Iraqi civil war and the rise of Iran, but they seemed uninterested. ... It was all Israel, all the time. ...

The Arabs will nurture this Zionist-centric mythology, which is as self-flattering as it is self-destructive. They will demand that the U.S. and Israel adopt their narrative and admit historical guilt. Failing politically, militarily and economically, they will fight a battle for moral superiority, the kind of battle that does not allow for compromises or truces. ...

What we have is not a clash of civilizations, but a gap between civilizations, increasingly without common narratives, common goals or means of communication.

Contact for Christ Blog launched

Following hard on the heels of the Christian Enquiry Agency, Contact for Christ now has its own Blog. It will focus on subjects relating to evangelism in the United Kingdom, focusing especially on projects being supported by the Deo Gloria Trust. Subscribe to updates here.

Meretz USA News Update, 4/13/07

Focus on: Hebron's "House of Dispute"

The Jewish Telegraph Agency’s Dina Kraft wrote this week that a “more aggressive and proactive mood in the settler camp” is developing — “especially among the younger generation.” It’s an assertiveness that has manifested itself in recent actions such as a march to Homesh, one of four West Bank settlements from which Israel withdrew in the summer of 2005, as well as the disputed purchase of a house in Hebron. The Homesh “re-settlers” have since been evacuated, but those in Hebron continue to set up camp — creating a tense situation in an area known for its hostilities between Jewish settlers and Palestinian inhabitants.

Hebron is known and revered in all three Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) as home to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the burial place of the patriarchs and matriarchs of the bible: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah. The city is overwhelmingly inhabited by Palestinians, but, after Israel took control of the West Bank in 1967, the government set up the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba — providing a place for settlers outside, but close to, the city. However, in 1979, several women and children took up residence in an abandoned building in Hebron. This residence called Beit Hadassah was subsequently joined by three other settlements, Tel Rumeida, Beit Ramano, and Beit Chason.

Enjoying extensive army protection, these settlements have significantly disrupted the lives of local Palestinians. An increased military presence surrounding the buildings – along with frequent violence and harassment by the settlers – has caused many Palestinians to abandon their homes. As Yehuda Litani writes, those 150,000 that remain face drastic restrictions on movement and live in fear of the 600 or so settlers. One Palestinian resident of Tel Rumaida, who recently had his car torched for the fourth time in recent months, is no exception.

Now settlers have taken over a new building. Already housing more than thirty families and a school, and no smaller in size than the four already inhabited, a Haaretz editorial rightly points out that the move constitutes the beginning of a new settlement. Even more dangerously, the building occupies a strategic location between Kiryat Arba and the four older settlements: with all the army protection it will necessitate, the new settlement, if it stays, will connect the two points, creating a barrier between the northern and southern parts of the city.

The settlers occupied the building illegally. Although they allegedly purchased it from a Palestinian, they did not receive the Defense Minister’s consent — a prerequisite in this case. Amir Peretz has since ordered their evacuation, but this does not mean that the settlers will now leave. In fact, they now have fifteen days to appeal to the Civil Administration, the branch of the IDF in charge of civilian affairs in the Territories. And even if this petition is overturned, they will be able to turn to the higher courts for additional recourse.

It is for these reasons that Nehemia Shtrasler writes that eviction is becoming increasingly unlikely: even throughout the legal battles, “they will bring equipment, additional families, volunteers, sympathizers and yeshiva students from all over the country, as well as ministers and MKs who will visit and express support.”

Historically, this sequence of events: 1) the takeover a house without government authorization; 2) in the name of security, the creation of a military presence around the house — resulting in restrictions on Palestinians in the surrounding area; and 3) the establishment of a permanent presence with ex pos facto authorization “ is the settlers” modus operandi. This is what happened in 1979 at Beit Hadassah, when women and children settled in quietly at night, surprising soldiers and causing them to set up a restricted area around the building.

Everyone agrees that, had Defense Minister Peretz acted immediately, he could have removed the settlers — indeed, he did so just recently in Homesh. But each day the settlers resist removal, the more deeply entrenched they become. Yossi Sarid writes that for the settlers, “temporary” means “for eternity.” As we’ve seen in the past, time works in the favor of settlers.

In other news

* Amid rumors that he may resign, MK Amzi Bishara, chairman of the Arab party Balad, has been the focus of much speculation this week. At the latest, he has announced that he may not resign, after stating earlier in the day that he planned to do so. Read Meron Rapoport’s analysis of the topic by clicking here.

* Hamas militants have now given a list of prisoners to be released in an exchange for Cpl. Gilad Shalit. This list includes several suicide bombing masterminds and other notorious figures.

Did Ahab Rescue Jonah From the Whale?

Romany over on the You Did What? Blog writes of the demise of Spring Harvest's special Bible teaching week, Word Alive. I have to say that I am not completely surprised that the event has been cancelled as I've been wondering lately if Bible teaching is out of favour in the UK church.

I recently spoke at length to a lecturer at one of England's larger Bible Colleges. He shared how frustrated he was that the students starting their courses were appallingly ignorant of the very text which they were supposedly at College to study - the Bible itself. When asked many could not arrange important biblical events such as the flood, exodus, exile, monarchy in chronological order. Most knew of the major characters such as Abraham and Moses, but many had never heard of King Ahab, amongst others. When it came to theological debates students now have to have terms, which ten years ago would have been well-known, explained to them, using up valuable lecture-time.

Some years ago when I was in Vancouver I was asked by the minister there to prepare a study for the church staff on the Welsh Revival, because he believed that revival was what was needed in his city. In my conclusion I wrote:

It is important to learn from the mistakes made during the Revival. Roberts was no expositor of the Word, and this was a weakness that was passed on to the new converts, who relied heavily on emotion and not upon Scripture. In a sense the revival was based upon the preaching of a previous generation of ministers and Sunday School teachers, whose efforts finally bore fruit in 1904. When the Revival began to decline the established churches found it difficult to disciple the new converts, which is what they desperately needed. We need to seriously question whether our church is in a position to cope with thousands of new converts, before we ask God for Revival. Dare we ask for a Revival when we cannot care for the new spiritual children?

More and more I believe that this is the lesson the Welsh Revival has for Christians in the UK today. If find ourselves in the position of championing biblical ignorance in the face of clear biblical injunctions to read, memorise and to meditate on the Word of God we will continue to reap the fruits of this ignorance, empty emotionalism and ultimately, empty churches.

Fortunately, Word Alive will continue, but not under the Spring Harvest banner. For more information visit http://www.newwordalive.org/

F.F. Bruce on the Ending of Mark's Gospel

The following article is available on-line:

F.F. Bruce, "The End of the Second Gospel," The Evangelical Quarterly 17 (1945): 169-81.

Bruce concludes that the last 12 verses of Mark were not part of Mark's original Gospel, but that they can and should still to be accepted as Scripture.

Health Saturdays Compromise in San Francisco

SFist has all the details.

Glad this is over.

Cities are the Solution

The old paradigm of the pollution-filled city as a blight on the landscape, and the leafy-green suburbs with pristine lawns as the ideal, is outdated and does not lead us to a future of energy independence, clean air, and a stable climate. Cities are the best hope to realize our need for a bright, sustainable, and promising future.
Boston Globe

Politicization of the Holocaust

April 15 is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. The following is a slightly expanded version of my “Viewpoint” article in the March-April edition of Jewish Currents magazine (I serve on its editorial advisory council), “Politicizing the Holocaust”:

Sadly, our remembrances of the Holocaust are being sullied by politicization. These horrible events are still within living memory, but the violent renewal of the Israeli-Arab conflict, following the encouraging gains of the peace process of the 1990s, has rendered the Islamic world into a hotbed of anti-Semitic passions. This is the backdrop for Iran’s shameless Holocaust-deniers’ conference, which really was about the denial of Israel’s right to exist.

And an anti-Holocaust narrative is gaining force among the activist left in the US and internationally. It's increasingly hard for progressives to hear discussions of the Holocaust without some dismissing these — especially when coming from Jews — as attempts to justify Israel's existence or its policies vis-a-vis Palestinians. Anti-Semitic passions unleashed, ironically, at the “Anti-Racism” conference in Durban, South Africa, in 2001, was a particularly traumatic event for Jewish participants (See the “Anti-Semitism on the Left” subsection of Column Left, Israel Horizons, Winter 2005, pp. 3-4).

It’s with the left that I argue the meaning of the Holocaust. For example, I've been in a long-term e-mail dialogue with the now retired pacifist and Socialist Party leader David McReynolds and some of his friends and comrades. McReynolds himself insists on characterizing the Holocaust as not an exclusively Jewish event. He includes other victims of the Nazis and refers to 11 or 12 million rather than six million dead. He gets indignant when I point out that the others were murdered due to a brutal occupation but — with the exception of Gypsy groups — they were not explicitly slated for collective annihilation. Also, the Nazis used anti-Semitism as a mobilizing ideology of central importance, over and above their other numerous hatreds.

We are now increasingly living in a post-post-Holocaust era; the initial post-Holocaust decades were marked by contrition in Germany and the West for Holocaust-era crimes and the anti-Semitic habits of thought and practice that made them possible. But today, the political uses of the Holocaust are increasingly being turned against the Jews, who are being unfairly identified with the so-called neoconservatives, a tiny political current that is largely but not entirely Jewish, and has been conflated with the overwhelmingly liberal majority of American Jews. A crude chain of causation, which echoes pernicious anti-Semitic conspiratorial tropes, is widely believed in the world: Jews + Israel = Neoconservatives = Bush administration = Aggressive War.

I recently engaged in an inexact but illuminating exercise to get at the immensity of the Holocaust. Using the approximate start date of June 22, 1941, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, for its beginning — the Einsatzgruppen began their mass shootings of whole communities at this time — I calculated that an average of over 29,000 Jews were murdered each week until the war ended on May 8, 1945. This was over 4,000 per day; in other words, the European Jewish population of 11 million suffered the equivalent of more than one and a third 9/11 size catastrophes everyday for three years and ten months.

It is being argued with increasing frequency that Jews are now more vulnerable in Israel than in the Diaspora, and there is statistical evidence for this contention. As an argument this smacks of blaming the victim, but it does counter the earnest Zionist hope that Israel would be the Jews’ safehaven. And, sadly, the threat continues, magnified by the possibility of nuclear doom at the hands of crazed agents of Iran or Al Qaeda. Still, the death toll of all Israel’s wars, skirmishes and terror attacks since 1948 totals about 23,000 — equivalent to less than six days of the Holocaust.

These facts do not make Jews better than anyone else, but they do entitle us to recall the bitter memories of our past, and to consider the ongoing threats to our future, without apology. We are entitled to compassion and understanding from the rest of the world, not least being those who profess humanitarian and universalist values as activists on the left.

Progressive notes on anti-Semitism

Chris Macdonald-Dennis and I participate in an ongoing left-wing e-mail discussion group on anti-Semitism. Chris shared the link to Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz's article in the current issue of Jewish Currents magazine, "Some Notes on Anti-Semitism from a Progressive Jewish Perspective," and asked if she was "minimizing" the problem of anti-Semitism.

My response was that I respect the complex view she lays out, but what I think she's minimizing is the extent to which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict involves provocations and nasty things done by both sides, not just by Israel. (If only her view of Israel were as complex and textured as her view of anti-Semitism.)

A non-Jew who participates with us as a "Gentile ally" also offered some important points that merit wide circulation:

Anti-Semitism is the fault of the anti-Semites, not the fault of Jews doing any particular thing. Jews should have the right to be radical, conservative, visible, rich, poor, to make mistakes and to be oppressive – all the things Gentiles do all the time – without being attacked for those things as Jews. There's this odd little piece of anti-Semitism that says that Jews have to be better than anybody else in order to avoid anti-Semitism....

[And finally] Kantrowitz said that she didn't feel that she needed to police the person with the "Sharon=Hitler" sign. But I think it is the responsibility of Gentile allies to talk to that person.

Jesus and Homosexuality

Matt Colvin has a very interesting entry on his blog entitled An Unheard of Sin in Judaism which deals with the issue of whether Paul and Jesus shared the same view of homosexuality.

Matt concludes:

So, no, this is not a matter in which Jesus could have departed from Jewish tradition without automatically discrediting his ministry. When Paul says that unrepentant homosexual offenders (to say nothing of those who are proud of their behaviour and crusade for its acceptance) will not inherit the kingdom of God, he is not being the mean apostle who invented intolerant Christianity by revising the teachings of "gentle Jesus, meek and mild." He is, rather, repeating what YHWH has always thought about the practice in question, and what Jesus thought about it too.

Well worth a read IMHO.